


One Way or Another (i am gonna get you)

by blondie47



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Dinner, Eventual Smut, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Humor, Kidnapping, M/M, Murder Husbands, Slow Burn, Smut, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Will is a Mess, acidental murder, alana and margot do couples counselling for the murder husbands, alana is totally into 50 shades of grey, alana lives for the cannibal puns, because everyone knows will has a boner for hannibal except for will and hannibal, but a hot hot mess, but also there will be smut, everyone is fucked up, everything hannibal touches turns to the next level of fucked up, hannibal has all the feels, he is not my boyfriend, margot tags along, mysterious kidnapper but not really, only he totally is, pretentious people, sex is dark as always, slight dom/sub themese, there is plot i swear it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-01 00:57:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5186129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blondie47/pseuds/blondie47
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alana struggles with her demons, Hannibal has other feelings than hunger and someone wants them over for dinner so badly, they resort to kidnapping Will and Margot. Everyone is chill about murders and freaks out about feelings and Alana with Margot are forced to do couple counselling for the Murder Husbands.</p><p>or: how looking for your kidnapped lovers brings you close enough to allow stupid cannibal puns and trophy wife innuendos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Keeping the Promise

**Chapter One - Keeping The Promise**

_INGONISH, NOVA SCOTIA_

 

When Alana was still a Bloom rather than a Verger, she thought herself the motherly type. Not exactly the typical housewife with dinner ready and the house dust-free but motherly enough to rock the babes on her knees, sing them lullabies and read bed time stories. Maybe she could take a sabbatical for a year, caring for the little ones (there were always two in her mind, somehow) and guiding their developing psychology towards the good side on the scales of morality in those vital formative months. Back then, she could see it all as an option, and not a terrible one at that. 

By the time Alana officially became a Verger, marrying Margot Verger, her morality scales were broken beyond repair and having a child seemed more a practical necessity and a distant desire than any sort of biological need. Margot wanted a baby, and Alana wanted Margot. Besides, with all the wealth that came with having a Verger heir as their son, they could afford a plethora of kind and sweet nannies for the things Alana thought impossible to give to her own son. 

Yet, when Victor Rufus Verger was born, Alana felt more for the tiny bundle than she thought was still in her. It wasn’t exactly love, she reasoned, because it wasn’t what she felt for Margot or what she remembered feeling for Will Graham at some point. No, unconditional love was her wife’s forte with her nuzzling and kissing the blood-covered babe the second she saw him. What Alana felt for her son was a feeling eerily similar to sharp glass piercing her skin as she was falling out of Hannibal Lecter’s window those many years ago - helplessness and fear combined in a dangerous cocktail mixed by life itself. The blue eyed baby seemed to be the last remaining piece of the good doctor Alana Bloom, with Margot’s mischievous smile and pointy nose and none of Alana’s twisted darkness, a parting gift from her former cannibalistic teacher.

Seeing Margot’s cheeks wet with tears and hearing Victor’s scream of life, Alana knew she would do anything to protect him, if not for his sake then for Margot’s. And, she mused, to protect the last remaining piece of goodness that left her body in a form of a child. 

Five years later, seeing her only son bundled up in a towel and happily giggling on the knees of supposedly deceased mass murderer, Alana was ready to kill with the ferocity of a starved animal. 

“Hello, Alana,” Hannibal spoke calmly, poking Victor in his neck softly which rewarded him with a high pitched squee. All the colour faded from Alana’s tanned face and she took in the image, trying to remember how to play Hannibal’s game through the bloodlust and panic that rang through her mind. Her son might as well be playing with a loaded gun and she knew she was the one who could trigger it by the wrong move. 

“Hello, Hannibal,” she answered in an equally calm voice, her hands coming together in front of her, shoulders square. To be rude would be a rookie mistake and a fatal one at that. “Would you be so kind and let my son go? His supper will be cold and you of all people understand how important timely dining is in a life of a young man.”

Hannibal seemed to seriously ponder this thought for a second and then he leaned in to press his mouth on Victor’s thin arm, dangerous lips brushing the soft skin. 

Alana’s breath hitched in her throat and she almost launched forward: to hell with all the rules and mind games when Hannibal was ready to bite off her son’s arm. The man stopped her with a growl and an actual loaded gun that was aimed at her, hidden from Victor’s view. 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Hannibal warned, finger on the trigger and teeth on Victor’s skin. The young boy was not giggling anymore, he just watched Hannibal with curiosity as he licked a patch of skin, sending the boy into a laughing fit. 

“Me, now me!” Victor exclaimed, licking his own arm and grimacing. “Yuck, I taste salty!”

“Do you know why, Victor?” Hannibal asked, never breaking the eye contact with Alana. 

“Yeah,” the boy answered. He didn’t care to elaborate on the answer, instead reaching for his foot to lick a patch there as well. Alana watched this behaviour with interest, trying to determine whether Hannibal gave her son some sort of a drug or whether he was just being silly. Margot would have known, she assumed, as her wife spend more time playing with Victor than she usually did. 

“Where is she?” she asked, voice starting to tremble with the realisation that it was Margot who took Victor to the beach that morning. “What did you do to her?”

Hannibal took Victor’s ankle to his hand and tugged, making the boy almost fall down from the chair if he didn’t grab Hannibal’s neck in time to hang from it. He seemed natural with the boy, playful even. Alana shrugged at the thought. It felt like watching Animal Planet where you just know the gazelle is going to get ripped to pieces by the lurking predator.

“See, a suckling pig is often rubbed with salt a day before cooking. It brings out the flavours quite nicely.”

Not missing the not-so-hidden threat, she pleaded. “Hannibal, please. Have me but leave him out of this. This is not his world, it’s ours.”

“Interesting that you should bring that possessive pronoun into the conversation. I assume there are more of us here to reminisce about this world than you and I, then?”

“What are you talking about?” she tried to take a step forward but Hannibal pointed the gun swiftly towards Victor and tutted. She froze again. “And what did you do with Margot?”

The man’s stoic face seemed to reflect an emotion close to confusion for a second.

“Mama, I taste salty from the sea!” Victor chipped in happily, rolling in the towel that was between him and Hannibal. As he wanted to jump off Hannibal’s lap to presumably go and show his mom, Hannibal’s grip tightened on his small waist. Victor huffed in annoyance. “Go away,” he demanded but Hannibal didn’t let go, holding the squirming boy firmly in his grip. That would not end up well.

“Darling, it’s okay," Alana tried, thinking fast on her feet. "It’s a game of catch...and you’re only safe on the chair, it's your home where I cannot catch you. Otherwise I catch you and I—-“ Alana trailed off, not exactly sure how these sort of games were played. She just knew she had to calm Victor down before Hannibal resorts to violence to calm the boy himself. 

“You will catch me and you will eat me!” Victor exclaimed, mood changing from anger to excitement in mere seconds in a fashion only children knew.

Alana did not find that funny at all, however when her eyes met with Hannibal she could swear she saw amusement in her own image reflecting back at her. 

“Yes,” Hannibal nodded as the boy literally climbed back on him, little feet finding the spot unoccupied by Hannibal on the chair to stand on it. He was so blissfully unaware of danger. 

“I promised you I would take all of this away, as easily as I had given it to you, Alana. I keep my promises, what sort of gentleman would I be if I broke a promise to a lady?”

Rolling her eyes would be probably rude, Alana reasoned. Semantics always worked better with Hannibal, anyway.

“What sort of gentleman kidnaps a child from one’s wife?”

“Now, Alana, surely it is not kidnapping but rather a rescue when one brings a lost child home.”

It was Alana’s turn to blink in confusion. “Margot took Victor to the beach this morning. The nanny had a morning off, he wasn’t alone.”

There was something strange about Hannibal, Alana realised when her old Baltimore chief administrator persona finally fully overtook her fierce protective instincts. His voice was higher than usual, his stubble not as well kept as she remembered. He looked exhausted and unnerved, which in itself was unnerving. If there was one reassuring thing about Hannibal it was that he wasn’t insane as he pleaded at court. Seeing him shaken like this sent chills all over her body. God save them all if Hannibal Lecter gone insane.

“Give me Will Graham and I will give you your son,” Hannibal said, “for now at least.”

Were it not for the fact Hannibal was holding Victor, Alana would probably collapse into a manic fit of laughter. How could she for even _one second_ doubt that anything Hannibal did was _not_ about Will Graham? How stupid could she be, thinking that perhaps the man paid her a visit to see _her,_ to kill _her,_ to keep an unwanted promise he has given _her_? 

Of course it had to be about Will. It always was with Hannibal, wasn’t it?

“Did you lose him?” she asked, the darkness in her shadowing her mother figure for a moment. As the question left her lips, she realized she just put her son’s life on thin ice. Quickly, she added: “He isn’t here, Hannibal. I haven’t seen Will ever since he eloped with you to catch the Dragon. I swear it.”

“You don’t want to be lying to me right now, Alana,” Hannibal growled. Victor kept shouting at her to catch him.

“I am not. You have my word.”

They stared at each other for a long moment and the air seemed to stand still in the room. 

“Your son was alone at the beach,” Hannibal said at least, shoving Victor off the chair softly, making the boy land on his feet. Victor hid behind Hannibal, teasing his mother to come and catch him. Apparently they had to work on the whole stranger-danger thing.

“Victor, go to the dining room. The dinner is ready, we can play after,” Alana said in her stern voice, trying to keep it together for a moment longer. She knew Hannibal liked to give false impressions of winning and she did not want to lose her son to a bullet in the back (even if they might have matching scars then, something in her purred with delight). 

“But mama, you need to catch me first!” Victor pouted, making a round around the chair. “You have to catch me!”

This was exactly why Alana did not want to have children. They were oblivious in the face of danger, and no matter how much she tried, Victor did not seem to be any more special or gifted than other silly boys his age. Margot always said he was so smart, however Alana hardly saw it through her thick lens of doubt she wore about this whole child thing. 

The key to winning this game, however, was to not let it show in front of Hannibal. God knows he would have a field day with that information. 

“Darling, do you want to go to the dining room and watch the tv after dinner or should we just go straight to bed?” Alana’s voice was calm, psychologically tricking her son into making a choice. 

“Dining room!” he exclaimed immediately, the threat of going to sleep early and without tv hanging heavily in his young mind. As he took steps towards his mother, Alana’s eyes never left the gun following his movement in Hannibal’s hand. _Come on, just a few more steps._

Victor stopped on his way out of the room to lean against his mother, who immediately ruffled his damp hair. At the touch, Alana’s cool sizzled with hot steam of relief. He would be safe, and Margot would be proud. 

At the mention of her wife, something in Alana stirred. Another wave of panic overtook her senses, a different one to losing Victor to Hannibal’s bite. This was less raw, more blood rushing panic that made Alana lose her ground. Instead of ushering Victor out of Hannibal’s reach as swiftly as possible, still not entirely sure why he was giving him a free exit, she stopped the boy on the doorstep. 

Perhaps turning away from Hannibal was not the cleverest idea but it was always Margot who was clever. 

“Where is mommy, Victor?” 

The boy smiled. It was a toothy smile and Alana hated the aesthetics of it. “We’re playing hide and seek with Charlie!”

Alana hated that she shot a look to Hannibal before asking: “Who is Charlie?”

Victor shrugged. “Maybe he takes care of garden, I dunno. Mummy and I was swimming when Charlie came and she told me to stay in the water and count to a hundred but I don’t know to hundred so I counted to sixty five because I am best with sixty five and then I was looking for mummy because I want to win but it is not fair because they have a car and they hid with a car so I think now you have to go with me in a car so I can find mummy!”

She heard Hannibal rising from the chair and coming up from behind her. He was like a shadow looming over her and her son, and she found herself wondering who she was more afraid of: her former patient or her own child. It was a strange thought. Stranger still that the boy was oblivious to Hannibal’s dangerous presence. Didn't children sense these things? He was either incredibly stupid or brave. For his sake, Alana hope it was the first one.

“How did Charlie look like, Victor? Tell mama.”

The child leaned against the doorframe, hair falling to his face. “I dunno,” he said and Alana felt her hand shoot up, changing the direction towards his cheek to her own hip mid-way. She never ever hurt Victor, not even in a disciplinary way even though Margot was not against the thought. Somehow, violence came easy to Alana but hard to inflict upon the blue-eyed boy. 

“Victor, I need you to tell me right now. Mama really needs to know,” her rushed plea was cut off by the feel of Hannibal’s gun against her back ( _falling, falling, falling_ ) and his voice near her ear. 

“As entertaining as this game of hide and seek is, it is not the one I am playing. Tell me, Alana, where are you hiding Will Graham?”

The gun clicked, ready to shoot. Alana assumed that at this close range, with the bullet piercing her skin, the angle would be just right to create an exit wound and shoot Victor as well. Maybe not fatally harm him but enough to leave him to bleed out. It was as close to being shoved out of a window as Alana could imagine for Victor. 

Before Hannibal had a chance to probably brutally murder a mother and a son duo, Victor’s eyes lit up with giddiness. 

“Oh, I know, I know!”

Both Alana and Hannibal cocked their heads to the side at the same exact moment, making them look like a strange, two headed hydra for the small boy. He laughed with an over-the-top laugh, probably mimicking something from a cartoon show. “Wee Gramm is with mummy, Charlie said he is playing too.”

Hannibal’s heart went racing as Alana could feel due to their proximity. His arm muscle flexed, his grip on the gun stronger than before. She took a deep breath. Everything was screaming at her to fight or flight but she held steady in Hannibal’s strange embrace. 

“Can we go with car to find them after dinner and tv?” Victor asked. Hannibal moved the gun from Alana’s back and she exhaled, not knowing she was holding a breath throughout this whole time. 

“Of course, Victor. We can all play,” Hannibal said and smiled down at the boy. Alana’s stomach made a flip. 

“Cool!” Victor exclaimed, running away in the direction of the dining room. 

The moment the child was gone, Alana twisted around to deliver a blow to Hannibal’s head. He caught her wrist in time, kicking her in the stomach and she fell backwards, dragging him down by his hair, trying to launch forward and bite his neck, ear, face, anything. Her long nails dragged down his neck, drawing blood and he hissed, his knee pressing into her hip with a brutal force. 

Of course he knew where to press to render her completely useless. 

They stilled, Hannibal on top of Alana, pinning her down. Blood tickled down his neck and he barred his teeth in a smile. 

“Oh, dear, this brings back memories,” he grinned. Alana’s first reaction would be to spit in his way but that was all Doctor Bloom and none of Professor Verger. She forced her muscles to relax instead, her gaze on Hannibal’s face. 

“Perhaps that is exactly what Will and Margot are thinking at this moment?” 

She knew Hannibal was easily swayed off his game (whatever that was) with the mention of Will. And while Alana had frankly no idea what was going on, she also knew that the idea of Margot and Will running away together was so ridiculous only a jealous and uncertain lover would lash out at the thought. 

The pain she felt radiating from her hips as Hannibal pressed harder proved her right. 

“Don’t—-“ she had to focus on her words, her vision white with pain. “Don’t be an idiot, Hannibal. Jealousy doesn’t suit you.”

His black eyes shone with a brown tint, as if his human suit was zipping itself up at the comment. 

“It is not jealousy, rather than professional concern over the well-being of our dear friend Will. It would have to be the return of his encephalitis to make him act so out of place as to returning to their sexual encounter and stealing her away from the picture perfect family she had created.”

He spoke with detachment. Alana was not fooled so easily. She felt a sting of pity for Hannibal upon hearing the ridiculous theory, being so sure in her relationship with Margot that anything less stable than that seemed to elicit compassionate emotions within her. However, this was Hannibal and their shared history prevented her from showing that side of herself to him. Besides, it was moments like this she could literally hear the remains of her marrow in her blood, overtaking the blood cells of Alana Bloom.

“Sounds like there is trouble in your paradise with Will, Doctor Lecter, for you to have to come up with a psychological diagnosis as a sole reason why Will would ever leave you. I myself could come up with _at least_ three different explanations than that.”

That was the moment Hannibal would snap her neck, she thought. Hannibal seemed to have similar thoughts as his hand moved to pin her wrists in one move and relocate the other to her neck.

“Always so very brave, Alana,” he mused. 

There was silence and then Alana’s throat vibrated against his grip. “My misplaced bravery and your misplaced jealousy make us a rather idiotic pair, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I wouldn’t,” he pressed into her throat, vision blurring. There was a fight within him and she saw it as well as felt it. He might have been blinded with jealousy but the petty emotion wasn’t enough to overtake his shining intelligence. 

“You stop trying to be brave and I will let go,” he suggested. Through her tears, Alana nodded. She rather valued self-preservation and if that would be the way, then she could play along.

Hannibal let go of her throat, gasping sounds filling the air. The living room was dark by the time they got to finish their violent dance and Hannibal stood up. Sharp pain in her hip was not unwelcome, making her panic over the situation less overwhelming. She struggled to get up. Hannibal dragged her up to her feet, stepping back to allow her to support herself on the table nearby. She took out her phone and he didn’t make a move to stop her. A strange agreement bound them together.

“It has been a week since I last heard from Will. I would wager it is going to be even longer to hear from your wife,” he commented as the call went straight to Margot’s voicemail.

“Someone took Will from you and Margot from me,” Alana decided, slowly replaying the situation. “It is illogical your first instinct would be to assume he came back to me, or even that I would have any interest in helping him get away from you. That Alana Bloom is long gone. I would assume both you and Will are smart enough to realise that.”

“I must admit, it did cross my mind. However, there were other rather unpleasant factors that pointed to you as our finances have somehow been relocated to an account I have no power over and the only family with enough resources to accomplish that would be the Vergers.”

If Hannibal could ever look embarrassed it would be then. Alana couldn’t help herself but to smile. Yes, she enjoyed stripping Hannibal of his belongings back in he Baltimore mental institution but she never thought the act got under Hannibal’s skin so deep as to assume she would do it again.

“Will has gone missing and your secret stash has gone with him,” she shot him a look. Hannibal sneer at the implication. 

“William had full access to our finances, yes, however the reasons he was with me were not based on wealth. Not everyone needs to birth a child to get to the bank accounts, dear.”

It was both completely wrong and right. Hannibal had that effect on people. Alana rolled her eyes at the endearment, not afraid to be rude without the presence of her son in the room. 

“Whoever lured Will and Margot to them - and now I am going on a whim here and say even kidnapped - would know that without your finances you would turn to me. They want us to cooperate.”

Hannibal nodded. “They knew I would be coming here and waited with Margot disappearance until the moment I got here. Perhaps they thought we would kill each other assuming the other harmed them.”

“You threatened my son, Hannibal. That did not exactly make me feel against the idea.”

“My sincere apologies for that, Alana. It was not very polite of me.”

There was nothing sincere about that sentence. 

“I will arrange for all my contacts to search for Margot…and Will,” she decided. Wealth was a wonderful thing, having people on stand by just for this sort of thing. Being aware of Hannibal’s possible survival made them strengthen their bonds with the darker side of personal protection, having their own people among the most vile criminals in the world. Hannibal standing across from her in a shadowed room made her doubt the success of those precautions greatly but it was the only course of action she could suggest.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend, indeed,” Hannibal grinned but it was an empty sort of face, darkened by unwanted fear. He could probably come up with more pretentious idioms, were he in his top form.

Alana’s mind reeled with possibilities. Maybe there was no connection between Margot’s sudden disappearance and Will’s very likely departure from his twisted relationship with Hannibal. She could have played along Hannibal’s game and then have him killed. Or kill him herself, that also seemed like a pleasant idea. Perhaps this was all an elaborate plan how to use her feelings for Margot against her, Hannibal luring her somewhere under false pretensions just to find out she was tricked into a blood bath where she would be forced to take Margot’s life herself, with Will's and Hannibal’s laughter as the accompanying music score. 

Hannibal was stoic in the room, hands behind his back. He waited. 

“We are not friends, Hannibal,” Alana decided. She took a few slow steps towards the doctor, breathing hard without the support of her cane and with the dulling pain in her hip. He eyed her suspiciously, the gun still in his hand behind his back. He didn’t move as she breathed her threat:

“If I find out that Margot’s gone to be a pawn in one of your fucked up games, I will personally choke the air out of your lungs and I will make Will Graham, wherever in the world he is, watch you die before ripping his chest apart with my bare hands and you will not have the pleasure of watching any of that. Do we have an agreement?”

Her red lipstick was smudged from the fight and he made a move to clean it with his thumb. Alana hissed and bared her teeth, a warning in her piercing blue eyes. He reconsidered and nodded. 

“Very well. I can promise you this is not one of my games.” That promise did little to reassure her of anything.  “However, this is most certainly a game of someone’s making.”

Alana found herself agreeing with that as she reached behind Hannibal’s back and took the gun to her hand, pointing it at Hannibal for a change. The fact that he let her stirred something inside her and her darkness sprung to life with that idea. She was walking a fine, fine line. It thrilled her.

“With the devil on my side, I find it hard to believe we could ever lose.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up in the next chapter: Alana's son is actually a smart cutiepie, Hannibal deflects his raging boner for Will by recalling old Lithuanian folktales and conversations are held by the fireplace with bottles of wine!
> 
> (eventual smut comes much later darlings but i promise it. comments feed by soul.)


	2. The Devil On My Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alana's son is smarter than she thinks and Hannibal deflects emotions in the spirit of Lithuanian folk tales.

The house the Vergers occupied the last year was nowhere near as huge as the Verger estate back in Massachusetts, however that did not stop Margot from hiring about the same number of people to take care of it. Alana wasn’t very comfortable with the idea of having strange people in the house most of the day but Margot insisted it would be much easier that way to bring up a child. Alana did not see the connection there but perhaps growing up with domestic staff was all Margot knew and therefore a part of what she wanted to share with their son.

As it was usually the way, Margot charmed the agreement out of her. There was little Alana wouldn’t give Margot, a new trait that surprised her every time she found herself agreeing on a bigger garden, a private yacht, or a new horse.  It was the thrill of seeing Margot beg for her approval, shower her with affection and sex that made Alana look forward every new thing her wife wanted to _discuss_ with her. Not like she had to, it was mostly the Verger money they were spending, but Margot seemed to think that Alana had to have a final word in everything.

Perhaps giving her a son really did come with unexpected benefits, Alana often mused to herself. She would love Margot no matter what but the money thing did come into play whether they wanted it to or not. It was a thrilling sort of power.

Now Margot was gone, and being left alone with all the power provided no thrill at all.

“I am not letting you anywhere near Victor again,” Alana warned Hannibal, who seemed uninterested in the conversation they were having where Alana explained their next steps. Mostly it consisted of steps how to shield Victor from Hannibal and manage her staff rather than anything helpful so Hannibal chose to examine the decor of the living instead. 

Tacky paintings. Horse-related trinkets. One or two good books, mostly useless textbooks. Some children toys. Boring. 

“Unnecessary but understandable,” he agreed. “I am rather good with children, don’t you think?” 

Alana finished texting code red to her most useful contacts and looked up. What was this thing in her that made her view Hannibal as a toy to play with rather than the killer he was? Her first reaction should be fear, her words should be meek and non-provoking. Hannibal could kill her with his bare hands, she did not fool herself into thinking she had any advantage over him now that he was not literally pressing into her throat. Hannibal always had his hands on everyone’s throat, even if they didn’t know it. And yet:

“I don’t know Hannibal, let me call Abigail to ask about that,” she said. If there was a button that shouldn’t be pushed, Alana was somehow drawn to push just that one. 

Hannibal barely twitched. “Abigail was not a child other than the child of me and William.”

For being a psychiatrist, Alana found Hannibal lacking a great deal of self-reflection. He enjoyed hearing himself talk but she assumed it was more the melody of the sentences and the sound of the words than their actual meaning. Not like anything Hannibal ever said had an actual straight-forward meaning. Knowing this, however, did not explain why other people were so drawn to his words as well. Will, Bedelia, Jack, most of his patients…even she fell for the sweet growls of his deep voice at some point. 

She put the phone away, aiming for the doors. She heard a faint buzzing of the tv and assumed that by the time she managed to organise a world-wide hunt for Margot and Will, her son was already watching some dumbing down cartoons before bed. She paused in the doorway. Was she really going to let Hannibal roam her house freely? Sure, she already had three snipers on him (he probably knew this without having to be told) but when did that ever stop him from emerging victorious?

If he wanted her dead, she would be. And the snipers, and the nannies and Victor and probably the neighbours two acres across the field, too. There was nothing she could do to restrain Hannibal, there was no glass wall between them anymore. Somehow the acceptance of the lurking danger made it easier to ignore it. Was this what soldiers felt like on the battlefront? Was this what attracted Will to him, the constant adrenaline rushing through your veins, wheels in your brain turning to question everything, all the time?

Alana did not posses the empathy Will Graham did. And while she could imagine surviving in Hannibal’s darkness for the time being, she could never enjoy it. Her own darkness had a different hue to it, one that did not mingle with rituals and fine dining. Her darkness was more violent and controlling, she concluded.

“Who do you think did it?” Alana asked carefully. “You must have an idea which one of your crazed patients would be capable of successfully kidnapping the most guarded rich woman on the East coast and the killer empath blinded by love?”

Instead of getting an answer, Alana saw a strange sparkle in Hannibal’s dark eyes at the last word. Maybe she saw him better now that she refused to look at him through the human-coloured glasses and saw him for the wendigo Will described to her once. She knew that look.

It was the same look she had in her eyes when Margot had reached for her hand under the table at one of Mason’s dinners, fingers brushing her skin gently but with intent. She had seen herself in the mirror behind the ever so elegant Margot, looking like a startled deer, eyes full of hopeful realisation. Hannibal’s face was not far from what she saw then.

“Oh, Hannibal,” she laughed sincerely. “This is just way too good. You _really_ don’t know?”

She wasn’t talking about the kidnapper anymore, yet Hannibal refused to grand her a different answer. 

“I have had many patients throughout my career that might be inclined towards hurting my person by the means of taking away a dear friend from me. So, to answer your question: no. I really don’t know as of now. I hope the answer will reveal itself to me very soon when we hear back from your contacts.”

Still smiling, Alana stepped out of the door. “Whatever you tell yourself to get through the day, Hannibal.”

Now, if Hannibal was indeed a deer, Alana found him much less threatening knowing which headlight to shine at him.

-

“Darling, turn it off and go brush your teeth. Bed times,” Alana stood next to the expensive leather sofa covered with soft, equally expensive blankets her son was currently tangled in. 

“Maaaamaaaa. One more episode?”

“Nope.”

“Please?”

She sighed. “Victor Rufus Verger, what did we say about pleading?”

He kicked into the leather. He ignored her question. “Are we still playing with mummy? You will take me in a car to win? I can find her and Charlie, you know. In a car.”

Alana’s grip on her cane (thank you Hannibal for having to take that old thing out again) tightened. She sat down next to her son, his bony legs resting in her lap. She just hoped he wouldn’t decide kicking her in the stomach. Deciding that turning off the tv would probably make her son very uncooperative, she just lowered the volume. 

“I need you to listen to me very carefully, darling. Can you do that?”

Victor did not even move, eyes glued to underwater animals saving a talking starfish. Alana could feel her blood rushing faster, wanting to smash that stupid television until her hands bled and the little hairs on her arms pulsed with left over electricity. The thought of Margot’s nails scraping her skin there until she drew blood calmed her down, a technique she found worked for her better than counting breaths. A quick look at the fading scratch marks on her left forearm left her calm.

“Do you remember anything about Charlie?”

At the mention of the name, Victor spared her a quick glance. “He had a car.”

She had to dig her own sharp nails into her palm. “What was the color of the car, Victor?”

The boy shrugged. “Dunno.”

Sharper pain. Almost braking the skin there. “Was it blue or green?”

Not even a shrug this time. “Maybe.”

That would be the moment Alana would lose it, she thought. Children were useless, stupid little things. Why would Margot, beautiful, smart Margot, want one was beyond her. There were no positives to them at all. Now her wife was gone and what would she do if they never found her? If Hannibal, even if not by his hand, took her away forever like this? She would be left with a child she couldn’t be a sweet, caring mother to and an estate she didn’t care for. It was a new sort of pain, one that was breaking her heart in what felt like a literal way. What would be of her without Margot’s way to calm and soothe her demons? It would be kinder had Hannibal shot them both. Hannibal was never kind. Did he know of this? Was this his way of breaking her again?

“Tango hotel oscar, 9 and 2 and 0 and 4,” Victor said all of the sudden in what Alana assumed was a singing voice. She raised an eyebrow at that. 

“What?”

Victor laughed at the flickering light of the screen. “The starfish is a boy!” he exclaimed.

Alana’s mind reeled with emotions. “What is tango hotel oscar?”

Finally, the blue eyes met hers. Same colour, different reflection. “That is the car’s name, mama. Duh. It’s a game. We play it all the time. Our car is papa victor echo, 7 and 8 and 2 and 0. Like me, Victor!”

A flash of their dark blue Sedan appeared in her mind. The licence plate was a little bit blurry but she did remember it ended with 20. 

“T...H...O...is the car’s plate?” she asked slowly.

“No, it’s a _name_! Every car has a different name. Some have the same names, like there is Victor in my class but his other name is different. That is why they have numbers. Mummy taught me.” There was pride in his voice.

_Oh, sweet, smart Margot!_ Alana could kiss him right now and she surprised herself by doing so, pressing the small head into her chest and kissing Victor on his dark hair. He struggled to get away from her, his view of the screen obstructed by the gesture. 

“Can’t see!” he squeed. 

Alana’s smile refused to leave her face. “Say it again. Charlie’s car’s name.”

That drew no response so Alana reached for the remote. Victor shot up to take it from her. Holding it above her head where he couldn’t reach, Alana almost find the situation comforting. He had a child’s anger in him, hands grabbing the air closest to the remote control. “Maaamaaa.”

“You tell me Charlie’s name and I will allow one more episode of…” she glanced at the screen, trying to remember the name. Octopus stories? Something like that. “…your show.”

That proved to be motivational enough and a genuine smile appeared on his face. Toothy and ugly, but somehow charming this time around. _Interesting._

“Tango hotel oscar 9 and 2 and 0 and 4, tango hotel oscar 9 and 2 and 0 and 4, tango hotel oscar!”

So perhaps children were not so stupid, after all. Definitely not _her_ son, she thought, something dangerously close to pride purring inside of her chest. 

After texting the plate number to her contacts, Alana spent the next half an hour cuddling her son on the sofa, softly scratching his back as he drifted off to sleep. Soon, Marcus - their most trusted guard, will drive him to the safe house and she will be left alone with Hannibal, looking for their lost partners. She needed all the light her son provided with his steady breathing against her hand for that journey and so she allowed herself to bask in the unexpected comfort of motherhood.

-

She found Hannibal in the living room as she left him, sitting in front of the lit fireplace reading a book. Most of the staff was gone by her command, trying to minimise loss of lives in case Hannibal decided to go on a murder spree when bored after all.

“Found anything you deem worthy of your time?” she asked, her genuine curiosity masked with what she hoped would come across as sarcasm. 

“I often find children’s tales to be most true to human nature,” Hannibal answered, turning a page. Alana poured herself a glass of wine at the over-the-top expensive minibar and after a short pause, reached for another glass to fill for Hannibal. 

“I am guessing you are not talking about Victor’s collection of Pixar’s short stories about Cars,” she said sitting down in a chair next to him.

Hannibal took the glass from her and watched her take a sip from hers. Catching his suspicious look, Alana sighed, leaning over with difficulty to switch their glasses, casually taking a sip from the other one as well. “Hope your paranoia enjoys the taste of my lipstick.”

“Does Margot?” 

On the mention of her wife’s name, Alana closed her eyes and leaned into the armchair. The fire provided a soothing warmth on her legs, flames dancing across her eyelids. She grew used to ignoring Hannibal’s rhetorical questions. She was so tired all of the sudden, the combination of fire and wine lulling her body to sleep but her mind was alert. Her contacts still did not come up with anything useful and she knew sleep wouldn’t come unless she knew what their next steps were, out of this weird limbo she was sharing with Hannibal.

There was no point in talking to Hannibal about their current situation either: the man did not seem to know much more about the whole thing than she did. If he did, he probably wouldn’t be there in the first place, hunting down whoever had the audacity to put him in a position where he did not know about Will’s whereabouts. 

“How did you survive falling off that cliff, Hannibal?” she asked instead. 

Hannibal’s gaze was fixed on the fire, fingers tapping the edge of the wine glass, making the liquid tremble slightly. 

“Are you familiar with the tale of the Queen of Serpents?”

Were she not too tired to roll her eyes, she would. Instead she barely shook her head. So she was in for a bedtime story, then. There were worse things at this time of the night, she supposed.

“A girl named Egle goes to bathe in a lake with her sisters, where she finds a talking serpent hiding in her clothes. Wanting the clothes back to cover her modesty, Egle promises she will marry the snake.”

Annoyed, Alana huffed. “Am I supposed to just imagine Will as the naked girl from the start or will you come to that point later on in the story?”

The smile on Hannibal’s lips was a new one, and Alana did not dare to call it friendly.

“Egle’s father, who goes unnamed in the story and therefore we have the artistic licence of calling him…” there was a forced pause, something a poet would do to draw tension “…Jack,” now Alana did roll her eyes, “is not happy to marry his fairest, most valued daughter to the snake and tries to trick him twice when the time comes for the wedding. He gives him a goose the first time, dressed in white and a sheep the next, but the serpent is not fooled. In the end, Jack has no other choice but to give up Egle to the serpent and she goes with him freely, to keep her promise.”

Alana finished her glass of wine, getting up to refill it. Her hip pained her but the fast intake of alcohol was helping to dull the pain. 

“How does the story end for the foolish maiden and her snake husband?” she asked, deciding to bring the entire bottle to the table. Hannibal’s glass was still half full, red wine turning black in his hand. He spoke slowly.

“She marries the serpent, the King of Serpents as she finds out, and gives him four children. They are dear to each other, the King and the Queen.”

“Happily ever after, Hannibal? That doesn’t sound like your sort of ending,” Alana mused. 

“But dear Alana, that is not the end. Folk tales rarely end with the happy marriage, a castle and a child.”

It was hard to miss the implication, a rare thing with Hannibal. Or had she grown so used to him that she recognised them easier now? He continued:

“Egle misses her family, father Jack and her brothers and sisters. She decides to come back to visit them, pleasing her King by undergoing a series of tasks he gives her to allow her to go for nine days. You see, the Serpent King did not want to let her go out of fear she wouldn’t come back. After the days are up, Egle is eager to return to her beloved - however her brothers trick one of the children into leading them to the Serpent King and kill him in order to protect their sister.”

That was definitely not a story Alana has heard before. It was curious how Hannibal turned to stories and folk tales when evading questions about himself and Alana couldn’t decide whether he simply found it easier to communicate through metaphor or whether he purposefully manipulated the audience. Probably a bit of both, with a pinch of self-satisfaction over hearing his own voice claiming the air around them.

“The Serpent King had no right tricking Egle into marrying him,” she suggested.

“But she made a promise to the King. And she goes freely in the end, weeping when she finds out her husband has turned into a bright crimson blood foam, the sea washing him to her feet. Her husband has transformed over the injustice done to him and she follows, turning herself and her children into trees so they can all stay together by the sea forever,” Hannibal concluded with a gesture of opening his hands to Alana.

She was quiet for a moment, trying to follow the line of thought. Somehow she thought Will would have already asked a question of Hannibal about the story, something equally dark and metaphorical, definitely dwelling on the transformation part. They would bicker back and forth about who was the manipulator and who was being manipulated in the story, the girl or the serpent, both aware of their own roles.

Instead, Alana came up with a slightly different sway of conversation.

“Omitting the fact that the story helped little to answer the logistics of your fall that would make it possible to survive, you are suggesting that the act of falling with Will transformed him.”

It wasn’t a question. Hannibal finished off the first glass of his wine. Alana found herself filling it up for him. “Both the King and the Queen were transformed in the end.”

She curled her raven hair around her finger, watching it fall back to her chest. “I wonder,” she started, voice laced with pretended carelessness, “what was it that drawn Egle to promise herself to a talking snake. Sure, he must have been interesting and different from the snakes she usually came across, talking and all, but it almost sounds like clinical curiosity that led her into the marriage. I come across a talking species that shouldn’t be talking? Definitely not promising them my hand in marriage.”

Hannibal seemed interested. “Are you suggesting the girl was wrong promising herself and giving children to the Serpent King with such rapidity? Should she feel guilty for her husband’s death?”

She knew what he was doing, trying to stir guilt and shame in her for her own rather unexpected decision to marry Margot. He was digging for suppressed psychological trauma that would lead her there. It was a shame, really, since there were so many of her regrets and lurking demons he could have drawn out but instead, he focused on the only thing in Alana’s mind that she was absolutely sure of. In the games of metaphorical bullshit, Alana aimed for clarity. She leaned closer to him, elbows digging in her thighs, healing bruises from Margot’s fingers echoing in her mind.

“No, Hannibal. What I am suggesting is that you found Will Graham in your clothes by chance and carelessly promised yourself to him the first chance you got. You are no King of Serpents, you are a man who was guarded by your own walls until Will drew you out. And no matter how hard you tried, how your defence mechanism tried to shield yourself from his reach, you couldn’t do it. And in the end, you dragged Will down with you into the sea, transforming nothing and making crimson foam from both of you.”

Silence. Then:

“Interesting theory. However, the Serpent was interested in Egle from the beginning, something I am not sure Will Graham would agree on having in common with him, definitely not in an affectionate way. His own words were that he did not find me interesting.” Alana laughed, feeling somehow dizzy.

“You are so blind, Doctor Lecter, it’s fasci…nating how…”

He just stared at her, head cocked to the side. Alana blinked to get his eyes into focus, swaying slightly in her seat. The alcohol was suddenly heavy on her mind, limbs uncooperative, her throat swelling up. There was white noise in the room and Hannibal was standing up.

“It was Will who dragged us both down the cliff, not me,” he said as if that explained everything.

“Hann…ibal,” she breathed, the wine glass falling from her hand as he kneeled in front of her. His face was too big all of the sudden, and too blurry to look at. 

“Before ummm before I completely pass out…” her lips seemed to stick together, making it hard to talk. “Drugged, prob…probably. Please, do indulge me…how did you li-live through...that?”

Alana Verger was always curious, and Hannibal Lecter was always dangerous. The question did not come as a surprise to either of them and neither did the sedative. Alana Bloom wouldn’t have asked that. Alana Bloom was not there.

Hannibal flashed his teeth at her, all grin and sharpness. She felt him take her face into his hands, not unlike those long years ago in bed. The memories made her try to get away from the grasp, afraid beyond reason. It was a woman’s instinct and she went with it.

“I hate to disappoint but as William so gracefully put it - it was _sheer dumb luck_.”

She remembered thinking how weirdly Hannibal’s tongue wraps around the word ‘dumb’ and then there was nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will give you a cookie if you know what show was Victor watching! Also, the full version of The Queen of Serpents is nicely summarised here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eglė_the_Queen_of_Serpents
> 
> Of course Hannibal thinks drugging your friends is the easiest way to get shit done, especially when he pretends it is totally not because Alana was stirring his unresolved feelings for Will, why do you even doubt that.
> 
> Next chapter: we spend some time with Will and Margot, bless their abducted little hearts and Alana finds herself on a road trip with everyone's favourite cannibal. Not everything is Alana's point of view and that's fun.


	3. Don't Be Late For Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will and Margot find out being kidnapped together is as close to friendship as they will ever get and Alana considers suicide to be more acceptable than being stuck in a car with Hannibal.

Waking up with a headache was nothing new for Will Graham. In truth, it was more common for Will to wake up _with_ his head pounding than _without_ and so by the time he found himself face down on a green scratchy carpet in an unknown living room, he could pretty much distinguish what the dull, constant pain in his head indicated.

Sharp pulsing was for too much whiskey the previous night. Pressure on the right side of his brain was for insomniac nights. Pain behind the forehead was for therapy with Doctor Lecter. The squeezing feeling of his head was for inner struggle and the enveloping heat was for encephalitis.

This dull hammering in his head? The familiar leftovers of being drugged. Not chlorophyl. Something else. _Swimming pools. Sea weed._

“I would have moved you but you sweat like a pig when asleep and it’s gross,” a melodious voice reached his ears, making Will take in the surroundings properly. His eyes found a woman sitting in a rather luxurious armchair, legs crossed and a plastic cup of some sort of liquid in her hand. She was looking down at him, his body splayed across the carpet, a pool of wet rubbing his cheek.

“Actually, that’s not quite right. Pigs don’t sweat, no matter how intimidating you are. Trust me, I know.”

Will felt a smile grace his face. “Margot,” he said sitting up, head in his hands to stop the room from spinning.

She kneeled down from the chair, offering him the plastic cup. “Water helps.” After gulping down the liquid - and to his surprise it really was just water - he nodded. It did help. 

The room they were in was not exactly the dungeon he somehow expected to wake up to but it wasn’t as fancy as it pretended to be. There was old mahogany furniture, a vanity mirror, a table, some chairs, a wardrobe of Chinese origin (something he picked up from Hannibal's lecture on furniture). There were heavy drapes on two sides of the wall fabricating the idea of windows but even from his place on the floor Will knew they only hid more brick wall. The dampness of being underground could not be masked, not even by the scented candles that pierced the air.

“Good to see you again,” Will said, not really sure whether she was his captor or not. He hazily remembered a man attacking him in the alley on his way through the small village he and Hannibal settled for the week. It was all blurry in his mind. _Fist to his face, sharp pain in his ankle, something twisting, something cracking, warm blood trickling down his ear, Hannibal, it is not Hannibal, where is Hannibal, black._

Margot sighed, sitting next to him on the carpet when it was obvious Will made no effort to get up. 

“Can’t say the same about you,” she paused. “I thought you were dead.”

Will chuckled at that, coughing loudly. “No, you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t,” Margot agreed. “But one can only hope.” 

“Did you hope I was dead? Found out I wasn’t, took it to your hands to make sure to remedy that?”

The brunette gave him a small smile, perfectly trimmed eyebrow shooting up, challenging him.

“What do you think?”

He didn’t have to think about it long. This wasn’t Margot’s style at all, an _oh she had a style_. Underground prisons, dressing something up as something else, heavy air: Margot preferred outdoors, natural scents, her accomplice being the living nature, horses and birds. Not stale air and pressing dirt. If she wanted to kill him it would be in the daylight, no pretence, no long process. 

“No, this isn’t your design,” he finally said. Margot looked around the room as if to invite him to follow her gaze. 

“So while you were playing the sleeping beauty, I checked the exits. There is only one genuine exit here and it is the door. I am assuming we are underground somewhere and whoever put us here has atrocious sense of interior design,” her gaze fell on the table across the room. 

“I mean really, those chair with that table? I fired people for less offensive combinations.”

Will wasn’t much into interior design and the chairs did not offend him on a personal level but he had a feeling Hannibal would agree with her. Was he here as well? Margot must have seen something cross his face that gave the thought away.

“Your boyfriend is not here, if that’s what you’re wondering. Just you and me and the gothic IKEA catalogue,” she said. Perhaps there were other things Will could say than “He’s not my boyfriend,” but none of those vocalised themselves as a reaction.

“Ah, apologises for that. Do you prefer husband? Domestic partner? Partner in crime?”

He gave her a look. Margot looked genuinely surprised and then her features softened. He could see why Alana would like her, she had a genuine compassion in her that was hard to come by these days. 

“Did he not survive the Dragon?” she asked. _It really is black in the moonlight. With my bare hands._

“Hannibal’s alive,” he answered and it wasn’t just fear that reflected back at him. Was there a name for a feeling between fear and relief? “Same cannot be said for the Dragon.”

Margot nodded, she probably knew that, national coverage and all.

“You were out of it for about three hours that I know. I can’t say exactly how long we’ve been here, last thing I remember is being locked in a trunk with what I assume was a horse dose of a sedative in my system.”

The room was not spinning anymore and Will could see her clearly. She was dressed in a bathing suit, barefoot and what he assumed was a see-through beach dress. Hardly something she would wear outside of the pool.

“He took you from your house,” he concluded. 

“Technically, it was a private beach but yes. I took Victor to the beach to get some Vitamin D before winter comes. Next thing I know, a man called Charlie is pointing a gun at Victor and telling me go with him to play with Will Graham.”

“Is this supposed to be a game?” _Black pawns, white knight, monochrome._

“That’s what I told Victor. Hide and seek. I guess we’re hidden, I am just not sure who is supposed to be looking for us.”

She had an air of sadness around her, talking of her son. She was a mother now. He couldn’t imagine how that felt, not even second hand memories of his own. It was an unpredictable feature.

“If he wanted to kill your son, he would. He was just using him to get to you,” it was closest to comfort he could provide. Empathy with her proved hard but came to him easier thinking of their kidnapper. 

“Yeah,” she said, more hope than confirmation. “You seem pretty calm considering the situation. But then I suppose, a straight-forward kidnapping is a pleasant change from being around Doctor Lecter.”

She wasn’t completely wrong. Perhaps not for the reasons she assumed, though. _Hands on his throat. Calm. Blade in his skull. Calm. Fixing a bandage under water. Terror._

“You could say that,” he grinned. “You don’t seem so bothered yourself.”

“Oh, I had my break down while you were out of it. Tears and screams, supposedly water-proof mascara my ass. It wasn’t pretty.” He noticed the black residue around her eyes. “No one can hear us, obviously. Tried and tested.”

“So we wait.” _Tick-tock. Tick-tock._ Not knowing the time made losing it easier. _Draw a clock, William._

“If this is someone’s idea of making us reproduce and populate the earth, they are in for a big surprise,” Margot mused, her green eyes sparking with mischief. _Alana would like that._

Will laughed despise himself, nodding still.

“And you just wait until they meet my boyfriend,” he added and suddenly, being held underground by a psychopathic criminal seemed like a perfect situation for their shared laughter to echo the walls of their prison.

 

-

 

First she felt her body tremble slightly, then she heard the faint buzzing of an engine. Her body was stiff and she could feel the ache in her bones even before she realised her hands were tied with a cable. Alana opened her eyes, light blinding her immediately and she shut them quickly. Slow now, her lashes parted for her eyes to take in her surroundings. A black driver’s seat. Hand break in the distance. She was in a car, bound across the back seats.

“Good morning, Alana,” she heard the driver say casually. Why did nothing come as a surprise to her anymore? 

“Morning, Hannibal.” Her mouth was dry, neck stiff. She forced herself to sit up, her bound ankles making it a harder task than her body would welcome. Still, she managed. The country around them was a blur at first but she recognised the landscape. They were making their way out of Canada.

“The border police will wonder about the woman tied in the backseat,” she offered. Hannibal looked back at her, a slight smile on his face.

“Yes, well, I hoped you wouldn’t have to be bound the entire journey.”

“You drugged the wine?” She remembered downing her second glass but couldn’t place when exactly Hannibal would achieve that.

“Only mine, which you so readily drunk to prove a point,” he explained. “You made it surprisingly easy.”

Tired of rolling her eyes, she just shrugged as much as the bounds allowed her.

“I must be losing my touch with you not lurking around every corner.”

“That you must be,” Hannibal agreed. “Your contacts tracked the car down. It seemed easier to go and find it ourselves rather than rely on your monkeys. And your wife’s sentiment for safe combinations proved useful when financing our little road trip.”

Alana had no idea how Hannibal knew the birthday of her son or the location of the safe but she wasn’t exactly surprised. 

“Sentiment is a chemical reaction mostly found in the losing side,” she said. At Hannibal’s look in the rear mirror, she grinned. “Heard that on tv the other day. Thought you might want to add that to your collection of pretentious bullshit to use in your sessions.” 

“Now Alana, there is no need to be rude.” It was a warning and even after all those years, _that_ wasn’t losing its touch. “Thirsty?”

A bottle of water landed in her lap.

“I am not exactly eager to drink anything you offer me at this point. I am sure you understand.”

 “You don’t trust me.”

There was a moment when Alana considered giving Hannibal a ‘previously on’ recap of their relationship during the past years which mainly consisted of lying to each other and splatters of blood but decided there was no point. Even after holding him captive for three years as his psychiatrist, she had no idea how selective Hannibal’s memory was or what pattern he used to judge a friend from a foe. The closest she came to an explanation was that Hannibal himself couldn’t distinguish between who his friends and enemies were, lost in his own manipulations. 

“I am the one who is bound in the back of my own car.”

Hannibal hummed at that. _Fucking hummed!_ She could feel the anger bubbling inside her chest, skin crawling with the urge to hit something. Draw blood. She struggled against the bounds, pressing the rope tighter into her wrists. Pain was good, pain provided calming feelings. When this time it didn’t, Alana almost whined. Only pain from Margot provided serenity. 

“Whatever is between us, Hannibal, I am not going to risk Margot’s life for a petty revenge. And neither will you risk losing Will. You need me to get to him and I need you to get her back. Texting my contacts will only get you so far without my co-operation.”

Hannibal’s eyes followed her speech in the rear mirror. She saw a healed scar across his temple.

“A leopard and a lion cannot co-exist in one territory without trying to kill each other,” he said.

Alana held his gaze. This time she didn’t need a blood red lipstick to look the part of a predator, ruffled raven hair sticking to her mouth.

“No, unless they have to hunt together.”

“Is this what you think this is? A hunt?”

“Isn’t it always?” she countered. 

After a minute of silence, Hannibal turned around in his seat, knife in his hand. Instead of gutting her, he cut the rope at her hands, the cold blade pressing against her raw skin. 

“Thank you,” Alana said. She recognised the smell of a truce in the air, one she could agree to for now. The boarder was not far, according to the passing road sign. To show her willingness to work with the cannibal, she opened the bottled water and took a sip. Worse case scenario, she would pass out again. Hell, at least she wouldn’t have to suffer awkward car conversation that were bound to arise in such close proximity to him.

“Where are we going?” One glance at the radio showed her it was 10:34 in the morning. She was out for good nine hours, then.

“Conway, New Hampshire. The car was located there five hours ago and haven’t moved since. It’s about six hours southwest from the border.”

Six long hours spend in a car with Hannibal. The eternity in hell sounded shorter to Alana. She immediately regretted not taking the car to a repair shop last week when the radio broke, as Margot told her. _Oh, sweet, smart Margot._

“Who is Charlie?” she mused out load. If nothing else, they could try finding out more about the sick son of a bitch who kidnapped her wife. 

“There were five of my patients with the name Charles. Most of them are not with us anymore, and the rest finished their therapy successfully.”

“Which by no means suggests that they wouldn’t be capable of criminal acts. Actually, after a successful therapy with you, the odds are even higher,” Alana suggested.

“Does it make you feel better about your success as a psychologist, thinking that by your standards I am unable to provide a healing therapy to my patients?” Leave it to Hannibal to find a spare moment to psychoanalyse her.

“Is Will Graham successfully healed?”

“Will was not broken to begin with. He was just…” Alana could finish Hannibal’s sentence with about seventy four words, not one of them being even remotely close to “…unfinished.”

“Are people ever finished?” she reacted. This earned her a smile from the driver. 

“I am. You are.”

“We are not _finished_ , Hannibal. And you will not be finished unless you finish with Will,” Alana smirked, “The pun very much intended.”

She never even entertained the idea that taunting Hannibal would be something she would enjoy so wholly. Then again, she never knew Hannibal would allow himself to be in a position where she would be holding any sort of ammunition to do so. Messing with Hannibal’s dignity was one thing. Messing with Hannibal’s obviously unresolved feelings was a whole new level. It was very pleasing. Alana stretched her sore muscles as best as she could, fully aware of the knife resting next to the driver’s seat. Knowing that Hannibal knew that made it less tempting to reach for it. What then, anyway? She wasn’t tricking herself into thinking Hannibal would ever protect her from anyone but he was physically stronger and in case they had to confront the kidnapper, he would be a much better weapon than a gun to take him down. 

“So, sheer dumb luck that you survived an impossible fall into the ocean,” she began, remembering the moments before her passing out.

“Surely you take it more philosophically than that? A second chance at life? The hands of Poseidon giving you and Will thumbs up to finally figure out what is between you two? Hmm?”

Hannibal’s grip on the wheel tightened. Oh, how she basked in those little gestures. 

“Accidental survival does not have to point towards a change in lifestyle. People tend to think so, had they felt a change was needed before. A push, if you will. Our relationship transformed even before killing the Dragon together and it has been steady since.”

For a moment Alana thought he was implying a romantic relationship between himself and Will but his voice was laced with something else than the reassuring tone. It was dangerously close to her own meek retort to Margot’s early flirting with _“I am flattered but I am not interested in women in such way”_ which was quickly dismissed by Margot’s clever little fingers travelling up and down her neck.

“It is definitely not steady in the way you want it to be. And definitely not in the way Will wants it to be, judging by the unpleasant memory of his rather tight trousers after every one of your sessions.”

She could almost hear the ‘rude!’ in his mind. Hannibal thought himself above physical pleasure but remembering the nights with him (with a retrospective shudder and a throw up), she knew it was all an act. He got it up for her when he found her mildly amusing, God knows how he must be around the goldmine of fucked-up that is Will.

He didn’t grace her with an answer. A speechless Hannibal was a sight to behold. Did the car still record what was going inside? That was a tape she could cheer herself up after a long day at the office. Margot would love that. 

“Mine and Will’s relationship is not based on physical attraction.”

Surely, that must have been a great opening to some remark about her relationship with Margot. Maybe she wasn't the only one losing her touch these days.

“I am just going ahead here and pretend that you said something about me giving a child to Margot and then continue with that to point out that you literally wanted to give a child to Will. Way sooner than me, and you didn’t have to wait nine month to pop it out, you just snatched the first kid with a knack for manipulation and hunting that suited the profile.”

Alana was getting used to the phantom feeling of sharp teeth biting off her arm that run through her every time she was resorting to what she knew was a very thin ice with Hannibal. It wasn’t hard to find what drew out the inner predator in him: it was always the mentions of Will and Abigail. She couldn’t say she felt much sympathy for the girl who shoved her out of the window, no matter how tragic her later fate.

“You grew reckless in our time apart, Alana. Perhaps there is still something left of good Doctor Bloom in you, after all.”

Changing the topic, however right on point, was not going to work with her this time. If her recklessness was a trait of her old self, persistence in the face of danger came with it. 

“You know, for spending so much time in Will’s head, you can be quite oblivious to the facts. Or is that you would rather not see them, afraid that you cannot reciprocate in such extend?”

His reaction was nothing less of a snarl, speeding the car up and then slowing down upon the sight of the border. 

Somehow, Alana had a feeling she would be soon travelling in the trunk of the car.

 

-

 

Being held hostage with Margot Verger provided much better entertainment than being held hostage with…well, anyone else. Will had been in similar situations before so he could pretty much be the judge of that. 

“…and then she completely wiped out our cellar of gherkins. It made no difference to her if they were a three hundred dollar jar from Italy or Wallmart’s very own brand, she just completely destroyed them.”

Will was chuckling with his head down, leaning against one the walls. He had tried sitting on the chair but it proved strange, starring at the brick wall and pretending this was an actual living room and not a underground dungeon playing dress up. Margot was sitting across from him, legs folded under her slim form, recalling Alana’s pregnancy cravings.

“She kept drinking the jar water for a week after that, I was almost surprised Victor did not come out a gherkin,” she laughed. They did that a lot, the past hour. Margot’s energy was changed from how he remembered her before. Sitting in his cabin, before they slept together, he remembered how easily his empathy took her in, seemingly genuine and honest. Now that she was a mother, his empathy skills seemed to pass through her, getting back to him in a loop of content and happiness. She was content and happy, even now, in such a fundamental way Will found it relaxing.  

“Hannibal regards gherkins as the most evil of the vegetable sort. I remember distasteful and ruining his sophisticated palate were the exact words. Pretty sure there is some childhood trauma in that, maybe they are the Lithuanian equivalent to broccoli?”

Margot gave him a look and he could feel himself blush. _You're not alone, Will. I'm standing right beside you. Terror._

“I talk about my lawful wife, you talk about Doctor Lecter…there is a story there,” she brushed her hair behind her ear. She looked so very young in that moment and it made him feel young in return.

“You talk about our common acquaintances. He was your psychiatrist, too.”

“I briefly considered naming him a god father to Victor, helping us to get my brother’s necessary parts for his birth and all, you know. That however proved difficult, being declared dead and with that murderous look Alana gave me,” she winked. It was hard to remain Will Graham, surrounded by such carefreeness. _Just like her horses._

“Come on, Will. Humor me. I was home schooled and now I am a lesbian mother in hiding, this is as close to a normal friendship bonding as I will ever get.”

He wondered whether the birth of her son was all she needed to feel this peaceful. She had a son, and he was not there in the nightmare with them, and perhaps that lifted the heavy weight Mason had set on her shoulders. There was self-destruction in her but it did not seem to matter to her anymore. Will took a deep breath and reached for the bottled water that was so graciously provided in their prison. Whoever was holding them there did not intend for them so die of thirst, apparently.

“You know Freddie Lounds called us Murder Husbands in one of her sad excuses of an article?”

“It has a ring to it,” Margot grinned.

Rolex on his wrist. Perfectly fitting suit. Hannibal’s shark smile, all teeth and danger. _Calm._  

“She would have a field day knowing one of our undercover identities was just that.”

She leaned back on her hands, listening. 

“I swear to God we probably run through all the identities by that point and Hannibal was definitely not amused about that one. But it was easier to check in to a hotel like that during the New York City Pride, blending in with the wave. At the reception I leaned in to give him a peck on his cheek for the show since the receptionist seemed a bit sceptical - and you know that look a deer has just before you hit it? That was it.”

Margot laughed at that, her beach dress falling open with the vibrations. She was pretty like that, he thought and somehow he detected Alana in his mind. 

“We never talked about that after, just got on with the plan.”

A businessman’s guts hanging from his stomach. Blood smeared all over Hannibal’s pointed shoes, a knife in Will’s hand. _Calm._ The look on Hannibal’s face, fingers brushing his when taking the weapon. _Terror._

“Was there anything to talk about?” she asked.

Will thought about it, then shook his head.

“There is always something to talk about with Hannibal. It was strange he did not mention it, that’s all.”

She hummed but kept quiet. He liked that. They didn’t speak for a time after that, Margot looking for something to keep her warm and coming up with the useless drape from one of the make-believe windows. It smelled of cigarettes and fish. He liked that, too. 

“It is frightening to feel danger other than the kind we are used to,” she said after a long while, leaning against the wall with Will but keeping a distance.

“ _This_ is a danger we both know,” Margot motioned around them, then folded her small hands in her lap. “We also know the constant danger of being surrendered by dangerous people, like my brother was, like Hannibal is. You grow use to it after some time, I think. It is still there but less raw and unfamiliar so it almost feels normal, doesn’t it?”

Will couldn’t bring himself to look at her. 

“It feels much more dangerous to allow yourself to love someone and to show it. You would welcome the literal breaking of your heart in two chambers rather than being rejected like that.”

Her presence felt not longer welcoming and her words replayed themselves in his head. There was nothing soothing about the dark shadow next to him, razors pointed at him from every angle, cutting through his skin with sharp edges. _Don’t lie to me. I don’t want to kill you. With my bare hands._

Will banged his head against the wall, once, twice. She didn’t react. _I am covered in scars._ The scars were opening up, bleeding, he was covered in blood, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t swim. _Calm._ Hannibal’s arms around his body as they fall, crushing him, freeing him. _Terror._ Someone was saying something, far away. He trashed, the motion providing familiarity. There was grass coming up from underneath him, tall, towering grass. Feathers breaking his skin with the bone, then the sticky fluff. He was a bird in the grass, wounded, bleeding. Someone was saying something, hands on his arms, ruffling his feathers. Cloven hooves near by, crushing the grass. _It's vulnerable. I want to help it. I want to crush it._ Louder, louder, louder, too loud!

“Stop it, fucking stop it!” Margot was suddenly holding him down, straddling his waist in an attempt to pin him to the floor. Where was he? His hands shot up to her neck, squeezed, released. _Calm._ She jumped off of him, knocking down a small table. It didn’t break.

Will was breathing hard, coming back to himself. Carpet fibres scratching his skin, damp ceiling with a candle luster coming into focus above him. He was kept underground with Margot Verger. He was kept underground with Margot Verger. _Your name is Will Graham._

The woman was splayed on the ground not far from him. With her bony legs and unkept hair, she wasn’t pretty at all. What did he do to her? Margot was trying to catch the breath that was knocked out of her by the fall. He didn’t move and it took her awhile. 

“What the fuck, Graham?” she managed in between short breaths. There was more to that thought but the doors on the other side of the room suddenly opened, no light at all. He could see someone stepping into the room and putting a bag down, then straightening up. Margot launched at the opportunity like a wild animal but the doors closed a second before she reached it, hitting the steel panel instead with a loud thud. He was still starring at the candles above him, counting the seconds. 

_Forty seven, forty eight. Your name is Will Graham. Fifty one. Fifty two._ Margot was sobbing across from him, banging at the unyielding door. Her choice of vocabulary was not very lady like. Rude. Desperate. _Did you just smell me?_ His hand was twitching. 

“Get up, lover boy,” he heard a steady voice - it was _two hundred seventy five_ and she wasn’t sobbing anymore. Will winced, feeling the pain at the back of his head. Sitting up again, he avoided her gaze. It was all razor sharp words, she was a flower, she was a thistle. How could he not see it before? He felt allergic.

Margot threw a black trash bag to him and he peaked inside. There was a neatly folded black suit. She was holding a long red dress in one hand, empty bin bag in the other. Her eyes were puffy and he didn't like her.

“That's Alana's color,” he commented.

“Don’t talk to me right now, I need to calm down or I will kill you. Your brand of crazy is so not sexy, I don’t know what he sees in it,” she opened the wardrobe to shield herself from his gaze. As if her thorns were not enough.

Will took out the suit carefully, examining it. A folded paper fell out. He opened it, scanning the unfamiliar neat writing:

_Don’t be late for dinner._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I believe Will's empathy is very unpredictable for him so he fluctuates between two extremes. Will with Margot is different than when he is dissociating from himself and it all messes him up in the most delightful way. Margot has very good social skills for survival, growing up with Manson and all, which makes her confusing for Will a lot since she always seems genuine up until the point she isn't. Gosh, their 'friendship' is my fav.
> 
> Next chapter: We discover what Hannibal thinks about all this and whether he is going to sedate Alana to shut her up like the actual five year old he is. Will does his empathy thing to finally figure out why the hell they are locked away and Alana surprises Hannibal.


	4. Dinner Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal almost has feelings, Alana cannot shut up and Margot tries to argue with Will that not every dinner is people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal's point of view is riddled with thoughts that sometimes refer to ideas I think he would follow without explaining such as: the story of Egle is in Lithuanian tied to how trees were named, after her and her children. Also, charcoals are made with willow tree parts I was told, and the poem Hannibal recalls is also real. If you are wondering, the Beverly Hills doctor thing is also true story.

He thought about stopping at the gas station not far in the distance, buying a longer rope and a sellotape and neatly putting Alana Bloom Verger into the trunk of the car he was driving. Her slender form would fit perfectly, knees at her chin, back against the backseats. He could administer more of the sedative he put in the wine earlier but that would not give her the time she so apparently needed to think about her actions that were oh so annoying. 

Hannibal would much rather prefer she reached for the knife next to him and repeatedly stabbed him than the stabbing words leaving her foul mouth. Who gave her permission to talk about Will Graham like that? And why does Abigail’s name even form on her lips? They were his, both of them. Will Graham was his, and the sound of Will Graham’s name was his and every fibre of that beautiful, transcended mind was his. Will gave himself freely just like Egle did, and his version of the story was more pleasing, and _really_ , they should name a tree after William as well.

There was the willow tree, he supposed. 

How could he not realise that before, he saw it so clearly now. His charcoals were made of it, and living statues were weaved of it and Will gave him the nectar of life, the colour for his drawings, the breath for his landscapes. 

Was William familiar with the poem Hongrang gave to her parting lover Choi Gyeong-chang? Or was it something Hannibal could give him? William would appreciate it, the beauty in the ancient words. He closed his eyes for a second to recall the poem, it was written on a sandy scroll of paper, guarder by a glass dragon in his mind palace.

_I will be the willow on your bedside,_ a part of it read and it was pure and beautiful and William would see it for what it is: a promise of the connection forever, between them, willow branches connecting with the pond of blood, different but content to be as such for all eternity. The poem echoed in his mind, each word carefully pronounced until they were all blending together in a harmony that could not be reproduced outside of his own mind. Maybe William would be able to hear it, too, listening closely to Hannibal, on his bedside.

An image of Will lying next to him in a bed, his body weaved out of willow branches and lazily stroking his own breathing chest appeared in Hannibal’s mind with a cruel vividness. 

The sounds stopped. He realised he missed the gas station. Alana was talking again probably just to spite him.

“You really cannot fuel this car on your rage alone, Hannibal. The tank’s almost empty,” she remarked dryly. 

“A patient of mine, a very good plastic surgeon from Beverly Hills, powered his SUV with fat from his liposuction patients for a good year or two. It’s not impossible,” he offered. Hannibal did not mean it as a threat but Alana always took it as such, her face scrunching in an annoyed expression that masked her fear.

“Liposuction fat, huh?” 

Hannibal grinned, finding her eyes in the rear mirror. “Mostly, yes.”

“Was that your suggestion?” Why did she have to take that offended tone? He thought she would be free of social judgments by now, at least when it came to him. It annoyed him how stubbornly constant she could be.

“I must admit, I was curious.”

“Figures, using the left over fat from cooking to fuel your car. Congratulations Hannibal, you are officially the greenest cannibal in the world.” Alana crossed her arms, head leaning back on the seat to stretch her neck.

Hannibal hummed in agreement. One could look at it that way, he supposed. He was very supportive of recycling and green living, hating the plastic boxes vegetables were stuffed in in supermarkets, after all. Vegetables should be organic, from the market, fresh from the dirt that nourished them. Tomatoes should have a distinct smell of lycopene without the offending aroma of pesticide. Alana’s tone was all bite but her words pleased him. 

He was weighing the different scenarios of confronting the kidnapper in his mind, would they find him at the address. It was almost careless that they tracked his car down so easily but then he supposed it was quite surprising young Victor Verger would remember a licence plate of a car. It was not impossible that they would take him by surprise and he had to be ready. They rode in silence for a long time, Alana probably trying to come up with some silly little plan how to save Margot and capture Hannibal in the process. She would never learn her lesson, and he was so generous to her. His patience had its limits, though. It was almost beginning to feel like mutual tolerance in the car when she spoke, ruining the mood. It was very hard to tolerate her when she was speaking.

“You said you haven’t heard from Will in a week when I tried to call Margot. Why are you here only now if Will has been missing that long?”

Oh, he wished she didn’t ask that. He really did not plan on two murders that night but apparently he will have to reconsider. 

“You cannot look like you want to murder me every time I mention Will, Hannibal. You are intelligent, think about it. You are avoiding, reflecting, mirroring, it’s classic avoidance coping. When was anything you ever did categorised as a classic behaviour? That must bother you immensely.”

Hannibal did not want to think about it. Of course he wasn’t nourishing a maladaptive coping mechanism, he would know if he did. Hannibal prided himself in having a high level of self-reflection and self-awareness. 

“It never takes you this long to answer a question. Unless you don’t want to answer because it makes you feel anxious and uncomfortable in which case you are avoiding,” Alana was speaking fast, the psychologist taking over. She was a lousy psychologist, he thought. Oh, she used to be so delightfully surprising when she was not faking bravery and wit. The woman behind him risked losing a part of her face as she leaned forward, head almost levelling with his. Was she aware of the danger or remained ignorant? 

“At first I thought that Will rejected you but that is not _it,_ is it?”

Hannibal was trying to focus on the road but the pleading grey eyes piercing his soul seemed to be tattooed to his eyelids. Maybe if he stopped blinking forever it would go away. That seemed like a plausible alternative. Alana continued and the knife on the seat next to him was begging to pierce the skin of her forehead. 

“Rejecting you or letting you progress with your relationship to different sphere would be a clear answer, one that you could process and twist and turn and understand. You wouldn’t be avoiding my questions, you would bask in making me figure it all out, leading me to find an answer.”

He could picture it clearly, Alana’s head opening when he tugged the knife down. Would she still be talking?

“It is the not knowing that is gnawing at your brain. Fearing commitment due to a fear of rejection.”

He did not want to be speeding the car, he wanted to remain stoic and unreadable. Yet, the car was moving faster and he felt his foot tense on the gas paddle.

“It is not knowing which stems from _not asking_ , is it not?”

A long time ago, she would look concerned. The new Alana had no traces of concern on her face, all cold calculation and amusement playing her features. He almost preferred the boring woman she once was. Almost. 

“You never asked him, Hannibal, did you? And he left,” she concluded. 

Why did he feel like she was mocking him? Could there be anything to her words since they cut so deep? The memories of his last conversation with William - or was it a fight in the most simplistic terms? - replayed themselves vividly in his mind: _we need to talk about this hannibal, i don’t need you anymore, you never needed me, i stayed, i wanted you to stay, i don’t find you interesting anymore, you do, i can’t do this, it is you hannibal not them._ Will’s face so close to his own, searching his eyes, not avoiding his gaze this time, sweat running down the side of his face, lips parted, ragged breathing, a trembling hand on the back of his neck, the slamming of the doors.

There was a sour taste to those memories and he felt it in his mouth. 

“Are you trying to psychoanalyse me, Doctor Bloom? I would think that beneath you,” he said, trying to mix it with his saliva to get rid of it. 

She leaned back in her seat, away from him again. “I held my wife’s brother underwater until the eels made a labyrinth out of his deformed skull in order to fertilise myself with his sperm that you helped us harvest from his unconscious body. There aren’t many things that are _beneath me_ these days.”

Alana did not look remorseful, recalling the events. She was almost melancholic.

“Besides, this is not psychoanalysis. This requires acceptance and commitment therapy, to show the patient that their behaviour is unhealthy and damaging in the long term. I believe we covered that in your seminar, actually.”

He did not like to be in therapy with anyone, let alone his former student and lover. However, the unexpected thrill he got from someone trying to get in his head piqued his interest, deciding to allow it for the time being. No one could get in his head like Will Graham but Alana provided an unusual challenge that was not as unwelcome as he wanted to think it was.

There was a strange connection between them, one Alana refused to call friendship.  

“You were always a top student, Miss Bloom,” he agreed. “But this time there are much more sinister things to be done than letting you fail a class, it would be beneficial if you remembered that.”

Hannibal’s words were all threats but they seemed to reach Alana’s ears as something else. She grinned. He decided it would be acceptable to go through his plans with her, after all. 

 

-

 

“Don’t you think it is a little…strange?” Will suggested, looking at the suit he laid out on the floor to inspect. Margot was naked behind the wardrobe doors, her swimsuit and robe hung over. As if he cared.

“That some crazy psycho wants us to play dress up in a fake living room somewhere underground? Of course I think it’s strange,” she snapped, still mad at him from before. Will did not mind much, served her well for being so hurtful with her words. What were they again? He didn’t want to remember what caused him to freak out like that.

“But,” Margot continued, coming from behind the veil in a long red dress, “I am not going to be standing around in a fucking swimming suit - so kidnapper fashion it is. At least he’s got a good eye on my size, there is nothing worse than trying to be the final girl in an ill-fitted dress.”

Will thought everything on her was ill-fitted, her autumn hair, her bony shoulders, her small breasts. _It feels much more dangerous to allow yourself to love someone and to show it._ His mind latched itself on those words like a leech that would not stop drawing blood. He felt his mind was bruising, there would be ugly bruises, and can’t Hannibal just cut them out? He needed to get back to him and Hannibal would know, he would know that the nights spend in a cheap inn with a bottle or two or three of whiskey did not bring him any comfort at all. Will did not regret leaving that night after a fight with Hannibal, he regretted not being able to come back. He had to come back to Hannibal, he wouldn’t be able to survive the separation. It wasn’t fair: they died together already, doing it again on his own felt unbearable. 

Hannibal’s knife cutting through his stomach. _Calm._ Hannibal’s hand tracing the scar the night he left. _Terror._

_Now is the hardest test: not letting rage and frustration nor forgiveness keep you from thinking._ He closed his eyes. He was right, they needed to get out of there. _One, two, three, what is my design?_

[ In his mind, Margot was gone, and the room was stripped to its bare damp walls. He was putting up the drapes, he was bagging the clothing, he was putting down a box with water bottles. He wanted everything to be as perfect as possible, he was recreating something. What was it?

He moved around the room with ease, setting everything up where it belonged. Why did it belong to that place? He knew why. Guests were arriving soon, the living room had to be ready. ]

Will opened his eyes, sweat tickling down his neck. 

“We are at his home…and he knows us,” he said. Margot came to stand next to him, looking down to ask for an explanation. She seemed curious. Surely she must have heard about his skills and she was unashamed of her morbid curiosity. He felt naked but could not explain to her why to look away. 

“I mean, we are not at his _literal_ home…the way…it is all stylised, everything has its place? Mirroring his own place,” Will got up, excitement rushing through his body. He touched the mind of the kidnapper and it provided insight. Walking to the mahogany table set for five in the centre of the room: “Here, this is where he eats at home. He is…is alone. He is always alone.”

Those last words hung heavy in his throat. He felt alone. Or was that not him anymore? He hated when he blurred with them like this, it was much easier to control his empathy when guided by Doctor Lecter. Mostly. _Every crime of yours feels like one I am guilty of._  

“Boo-fucking-hoo,” Margot rolled her eyes. Her language was not refined at all, did Alana like that? “ _How_ does he know us?”

“I don’t know but…there is something important about the dinner…it is not a celebration, no, it is…” he tried to think. He was lonely, this was his dining room, he was expecting guests, he was preparing the feast.

 “Uhm, I think he wants to eat _with_ us. Or… _us_.”

Margot let out a frustrated sigh, hands in the air. 

“No, no…Graham - you just spent way too much time with a homicidal cannibal. Not _everyone_ eats people. Actually, let me rephrase that for you: _no one_ eats people except for Hannibal. This is something else…” she was looking around as if she was trying to see what he had seen. 

“It’s probably about money. If he wanted us for dinner, we would be in the oven by now. He is keeping us alive and well hydrated and has probably already requested a ransom from Alana and Hannibal.”

Instead of gracing her with an answer, Will reached for the suit, taking it to the armchair to change more effectively. Her theory was dumb and he thought it beneath himself to explain the flaws: the kidnapper wouldn’t go through the trouble of tracking them both down, it was dangerous. He didn’t want a ransom, this was not about the money. Someone who can afford to decorate a fake living room with a genuine antique Chinese wardrobe does not lack money. 

Besides, she was wrong before that, too. Not only Hannibal consumed meat that happened to be attached to a human structure rather than a cow. It was unusual, yes, but so was eating dog’s meat in some parts of the world, there wasn’t such a big difference.  

Of course except that he would never eat meat from a dog. Margot did not need to know that.

“There are five chairs by the table,” he hoped that would explain it to the silly rich girl. “We are getting company.”

 

-

 

Alana was not completely trusting the idea of making plans _with_ Hannibal rather than _against_ him but she saw she did not have much choice. Something was different about the man - and he was a man now, wasn’t he? She thought it strange how things snapped back to what they used to be and at the same time managed to transform into something new. Hannibal was a man to her before she saw the beast but looking at the monster without shielding her gaze made her see the man again. However hard Hannibal tried, and judging by the frequency of his murderous remarks he tried really hard, there was a crack in his armour Alana couldn’t unsee. 

It didn't make her more sympathetic to his crimes, glimpsing the logic in his reasoning. Hannibal wasn’t some broken little thing she could put back together with clean stitchings - she learned her lesson with Will Graham, anyway. Catching glimpses of Will and Hannibal’s strange relationship made her marvel at how very much she misinterpreted Will Graham’s darkness for weakness.

Alana mused about the shades of darkness, the different kinds of evil she’d started seeing ever since the Chesapeake Ripper murders. Hannibal’s darkness was the blackest of them all, laced with pale bodies and the sickening smell of rotten bodies mixed with fantastic cuisine. It called all of them to its centre, some getting lost like Mason and the Dragon to the point of no return. Others seemed to navigate in the darkness, like Margot did, moving with grace and calculated steps. Every misstep hurt her but that only made her stronger. She seemed to only gain from her relationship with Hannibal. Unlike Margot, Will was a blur to Alana. His darkness was grey, a confusing mixture of white and black, changing constantly. She remembered Will before Hannibal let himself be caught, a fight of colour within him, dragging him down. After Hannibal allowed himself to be taken by the FBI, Will’s darkness blurred into a grey colour, no longer two opposites but rather a combination of both. She was curious to see what Will had become since the last time she saw him, and immediately cursed herself for agreeing with Hannibal’s theory of transformation.

Before she could consider her own violent tendencies, Hannibal stopped the car in front of a typical suburban house, white plastic planks pretending to be wood stuck to the outside walls and all. “Here,” he said.

Alana nodded, remembering the plan. Hannibal would find an empty house near the kidnapper’s own to observe who they are up against. It wasn’t improbable that there would be extra security around the place, men with guns and alarm systems. Someone who put this much effort into kidnapping Will and Margot would not be unprepared for Hannibal’s murder spree through his house. They had the element of surprise, with Victor remembering the car plate, and they wouldn’t ruin it with blindly rushing into it.

Besides, they needed to know whether Will and Margot were even _in_ the house. 

Without a word, Alana moved in Hannibal’s shadow. He peaked in the windows, rang the bell. When no one answered, Hannibal broke the lock with a practiced move and quietly closed the doors behind them. The house had a quiet feel to it, the last rays of sunlight kissing the solid oak flooring. There was post scattered around the floor near the doors where the postman kept delivering it. She decided to stand in the living room while Hannibal moved through the house, room by room, checking for possible tenants. Alana trusted in Hannibal’s instinct when he said the house would be empty, the owners probably enjoying their time somewhere in Florida for the upcoming months. 

She had no idea how he knew, but then again she did not have a long term practice in murder, so. The faces of a happy elderly couple smiled at her from the mantel above the fireplace. She briefly wondered whether she would live long enough to take photos like with Margot, fingers brushing the settled dust, parting it. She was going to look out of the window to get another look at the seemingly ordinary house across from them when she felt a hand on her should, dragging her back. 

“The neighbours could see you,” Hannibal explained. “We will wait until it gets dark, then we can look.”

Alana nodded, it made sense. She was tired and hungry and the necessary wait provided time to heed to those needs. Whatever was going to happen, she already had the disadvantage of a barely healed hip and slow reaction time in her legs, she didn’t need to be also unnecessary weak by starvation. Hannibal must have been hungry, too, she hadn’t seen him eat anything the past twenty four hours. Unless, of course, he managed to snack on the gas station clerk while she waited in the car.  Alana found the kitchen easily, looking through the half-stocked shelves. 

“Borlotti beans in salsa di pomodoro,” she grinned, putting a plate in front of Hannibal who was writing something down sitting by the window, peaking out from behind the drapes carefully. The sun was no longer out.

“You can’t translate Heinz beans into Italian and hope it will give the meal a flavour. Not to mention that is not borlotti beans,” he looked at the plate with disgust.

“Fake it till you make it,” Alana shrugged. Preparing a simple dinner of toast and beans reminded her just how long she hadn’t cooked anything. Maybe she should give the cook a few nights in the week off in the future. Alana felt a tug at her heart, thinking of her wife. It was surreal to think it was only a day ago she was kissing her cheek goodbye before going to work, promising to come home in time for dinner. Back then she had no idea she would come home to a missing wife and Hannibal in her living room. 

She ate the toast, it crumbled down her white blouse, settling in the creases of her dark blue jacket. It didn’t matter, her clothes were dirty and wrinkled form the car, anyway. Hannibal’s own red V-neck did not look its best and she briefly wondered whether it was the same one he wore five years ago. His strong hand was moving sideways on the paper, writing. Perhaps he was writing down numbers of people he spotted in the house where Margot and Will were presumably kept. Or the frequency of cars passing by, deciding when it will be the best to hide in their shadow to creep closer. Maybe Hannibal was writing instructions for her that she will receive later, in some envelope, after he drugs her again and leaves the house without her, saving Will on his own like a heroic character in a novel (Alana wouldn't be pleased but neither would she be surprised). 

When Alana stretched her neck to see, her brows knitted in confusion, then frustration.

“Is that a…poem?” she asked, disbelief on her lips. Hannibal’s movement suggested the finishing of a sentence.

“William will appreciate it,” he said. She couldn’t believe the satisfaction in his voice. Was he even interested in _helping_ at all or was it all a game to him? Alana felt something brush her lungs, like a snake hiding in the leaves. Her hand shot out, tearing the paper from Hannibal’s hand with a tear that seemed way too loud for just one scrap of paper. 

“Alana,” he growled. She didn’t care, holding the paper in the air with a pointed look. 

“Writing poems does not help anything right now. You need to eat something and be useful and I don’t give a fuck about how the simple food of peasants ruins your palette, you will eat it and then we will proceed to figure out how to save my wife!” She wasn’t shouting but her tone hinted on hysterics. 

Hannibal crossed his legs, hands coming to rest on his knee.

“Do you talk like this to your son, Alana?” he asked, his expression blank. “Would you like to?”

That hit home. The brunette made a fist, released. Again. _Quiet your mind, Alana. Control your body._

Hannibal was sitting by the window, unfazed and smug. Her skin was tingling with discomfort, sweat breaking at the back of her neck, chest heavy. It felt like she was crawling out of her own skin, the paper between her thumb and forefinger much heavier than it should have been. She thought of Margot’s eyes, how they changed colour in the moonlight. By the fire, they were green. In the darkness of the night they emitted silver, as if the moon itself wanted to take refuge in them when the night sky darkened with clouds. Her skin flushed hot at the memory, she felt dizzy. 

“No,” she managed, not exactly sure what she was replying to anymore. She wouldn’t allow herself to lose control in front of Hannibal, not ever. He wanted her to, and _she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t, she wouldn’t._ She would kill him sooner than that. 

Deep breaths, Alana. They were impossible to take, stuck in her larynx. She was in the middle of God knows where, with a man who had taken her ideals, her career path, her friends, broke her body and soul and then left her to die just to deny her even that. She felt he controlled her, even now, her own actions always shadowed by the thought of Hannibal. Alana wanted so bad to be hysterical, to be confused and frustrated and _normal_. Instead, she felt hollow, like her strings were being pulled. Like she let them be pulled, like she enjoyed being drugged and dragged across the country with the worst humanity had to offer. Alana wasn’t sure she meant Hannibal or herself, she felt sick. 

There was a slight concerned movement on Hannibal’s face before she heard the sound of keys being fitted clumsily into the front door lock. Her feet carried her on their own, hiding in the shadows of the corner near by, sparing a glance to Hannibal who did not even flinch, hands still resting on the fabric of his beige pants. 

The door creaked open, the light from the lamp outside denied reaching the wooden floor by a slim body that stepped into the house. Alana felt a warm feeling in her chest, like ink spilling through her insides, enveloping them, drowning them. It brought her an unexpected sense of tranquility. 

“Hello? Gary? Janice? Are you home? I saw the lights come on,” a female voice called out, the sound of keys hitting the small table in the hallway resonating in Alana’s ears. It was moments like these she felt unnaturally connected to her body, aware of the weight of her own hair on her shoulders, of her entire body supporting itself on weak legs. The bridge of her nose came into her vision and she reminded herself to breathe, acutely aware of the oxygen she was inhaling making its way into her lungs. She felt she needed to stretch them by will rather than a reflex and she thought she detected a change by her kidneys, epinephrine flooding them mercilessly.

She exhaled, the curious intruder passing by her and stopping a feet from her, body turned to Hannibal’s sitting form. 

Before the girl could ask anything or let out a scream, Alana saw herself launch forward, hands on the girls mouth. She couldn’t have been much older than Abigail, struggling against Alana’s firm grip on her shoulders, her shouts silenced by the painful press against her lips. Alana tightened her grip on the girl’s upper body, one of her hands sliding up to circle her throat. It was easier to keep the sounds in her body rather than fight their escape in her mouth. Her own dark hair tangled with the girl’s, and the psychologist saw Abigail Hobbs’ tears glisten in the girl’s green eyes. Brown eyes. Abigail’s eyes starred up at her, shaking her head in a silent promise, a plea of l _et me go i won’t tell anyone who are you please_ and instead of feeling sympathy, Alana felt the flames of revenge lick at her heart. 

She dragged the gasping, sobbing girl backwards, her own back pressed against the wall for support. Her legs would give in if this continued any longer like this, strangling the stranger without proper strength in her body. The girl’s hands were grabbing weakly at Alana’s forearm, trying desperately to loosen the grip. She was getting weaker and weaker by second and Alana grew stronger with the realisation. 

Hannibal watched with unmasked delight as Alana reached for the letter opener near by, bringing it back cutting into the girl’s back with ease. There was a muffled sound of pure pain, red blood soaking Alana’s dark blue jacket, smudging on her golden cufflinks before dripping to the hardwood floor. Her grip on the handle was strong, the blade running across the girl’s yellow shirt, cutting it apart and opening young skin. Her mind decided against stabbing Abigail, against killing using an observed move. _This isn’t Abigail_ , she reminded herself. The young woman in her grip was getting heavier, her limbs loosing their support as she was loosing consciousness. Alana dragged the knife back into the tender flash, outlining the spine under the blade gently but enough to draw more blood. 

Alana liked that, the ease of moving her muscles like that, being strong, being in control, deciding her next steps without feeling the pressure of making the good choice crushing her brain. There was a liberating feeling in understanding there is no right choice. That she stepped too far to even try to come back. The pulse under her fingers was growing weaker, the body in her arms heavier.

If she run the knife into the body and let go, would it rip the girl apart? Would it be like falling out of a second floor of the house? Curiosity run through her, imaging it. Before she could find out, she saw the girl’s head fall forward, brushing the scars on Alana’s forearm. Margot left those for her, silver eyes finding blue in the darkness, kissing the skin after every cut. The soft lips soothed her skin, her soul, her boiling blood. 

Alana let go of the girl and she hit the floor with a loud crack. Bones were easy to break, she thought, looking down at the body. The long haired girl lied in her own blood, the liquid steadily making its way to the carpet, seeping through the cracks of the floor. Alana kicked the carpet away. It would be a shame to stain it.

She wasn’t aware when Hannibal stood up from the chair by the window but he did, his eyes glued to Alana’s face, narrowing. Quite the sight she painted: white shirt open, exposing the skin of her white chest, tan lines curving around her breasts, the dark blue jacket hanging open at her sides. Blood was dripping down her left hand, the knife dropping to the floor near the girl. Her dark hair was plastered on her sweaty forehead, mingling with the darkness of her eyes. She was looking at Hannibal and she wasn’t sure she was really seeing him.

“The audacity of Michelangelo and the fecundity of Rubens,” Hannibal mused, thrilled by the sight of Delacroix's work materialised in front of him.

The words seemed to bring Alana out of her state. She allowed herself to breathe heavily, the aftermath of the fight resonating painfully in her bones.

“ _You_ would have killed her,” she said, not sure if that was supposed to be an excuse. Looking down at the girl and noticing her body moving shakily, she repeated. “You would have _killed_ her.”

To her ears it sounded like a better explanation for her actions. The girl would probably live and what were a few scars compared to a funeral arrangement?Hannibal hummed again. The sound was driving her insane. Blood was sticky on her fingers. He stepped over the body on the ground, bending down to pick a crumbled paper from the ground. Alana was not aware she dropped the damn poem.

“Don’t take my things again,” he said.

Alana could only nod silently, unsure what she meant.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As for the painting Hannibal referred to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece_on_the_Ruins_of_Missolonghi
> 
> Next chapter: hannibal connects the dots, alana does not and things don't go according to plan (or do they?). also there shall be a dinner.


	5. Renaissance Paintings Were Only Done in Renaissance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alana has a plan, Hannibal is not fooled easily and the dinner table is ready. We also glimpse into the past.

[few months earlier while recovering from the fall]

When Hannibal was sketching, Will found it incredibly hard to look away. There was something about the tranquility the other man possessed in those moments that reminded Will of the sea, of his boat rocking peacefully back and forth, making him feel safe. He wasn’t sure whether Hannibal even recognised his presence and he liked that: it gave him the freedom to be in a room with Hannibal without having to think or talk, his senses satisfied with merely watching the concentration on his face, strong jaw tensing occasionally, thin lips pressed together in a line.

While they tended to their wounds, as soon as he was physically able, Hannibal started sketching.

It took him weeks to put a name on the feeling in his chest that appeared every time Hannibal would sit down by the window, a sketching notebook resting on his knee, his white socks peaking out from under his sweat pants. First, he thought it was simply curiosity about what Hannibal was drawing, what he could possibly deem worthy to remember from the part of the world they found themselves in at the given day. Was it the starved dogs circling the houses outside their hideaway place? Or did he find beauty in bloodied cloths crumpled in the corner of the room where the russian doctor that nourished them back to life dumped them? Did he perhaps capture the movement of the blossoming trees outside the kitchen window, preserving the memory of rebirth after harsh winter?

Even back then, in the cold filthy kitchen that belonged to some time-old friend of Hannibal who took their cliff-beated bodies in after the sea spat them out, Will knew that it couldn’t have been just mere curiosity for he never actually looked at the drawings. What drew him in was not the art but the artist, always so lost in the process that everything around him seemed to disappear or at the very last lose all its importance in comparison with the paper in front of him. 

It must have been fascination, then, Will thought but that did not seem to fit with the warm feeling in his chest either. He found himself fascinated by Hannibal’s mind palace, his culinary skills, his surgical precision but rarely by the mere sight of the man himself. 

Will wanted to very much believe that Hannibal could not read his thoughts but then the man spoke, not lifting his eyes from the paper, pencil moving steadily across the surface and once again, Will wasn’t so sure.

“Is it your own enjoyment in watching me or do you simply find comfort in mirroring my own?”

He thought about it, eyes fixed on the edge of the paper across from him. It looked sharp.

“Can it be that there is shared enjoyment between us that is both mine and yours without the need to mirror each other?” he asked, trying to make sense of his feelings.

Hannibal’s eyes found his own.

“It has been a long time since you answered any of my questions with something else than a question of your own, Will. Are you hiding?”

“Does it bother you?”

The other man closed his sketching journal and put it on the small table next to him. Will felt a pang of regret that he interrupted his drawing.

“The answers you seek about yourself are not mine to answer. I can guide you there but I cannot answer them for you,” Hannibal said.

It was true, Will supposed. Ever since the Dragon’s change on the cliff he tried to avoid even thinking about the situation they found themselves in. He was no longer trying to chase Hannibal but he was not sure he wanted to follow him either. He just wanted to be there with him but that lacked definition.

“When you draw,” Will started slowly, choosing his words, “it is the only focus in your mind. You sacrifice your time to it, hours and hours, and pay attention to nothing else. That sort of focus is very calming for me.”

“What you described, William, is the same approach I take to my patients and they never seemed to make you anything but annoyed.”

The younger man chuckled, shaking his head. “You listen to them, yes, and make them feel like you pay attention but really, Hannibal, your focus is always on something else, the tick of their eye, the smell of their pet, the crease of their clothes. You don’t really focus on _them._ ”

“Do you have that feeling about yourself?” 

Will was not sure what was the aim of the question. “I…it’s hard for me to focus on one thing only,” he admitted.

“You focus on me drawing with ease,” Hannibal supplied.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “That…that feels easy.”

There was a slight change in Hannibal’s expression, almost as if he did not expect Will to agree with his assessment. He studied Will’s face for a long while and Will let him, the warm feeling in his chest cradling his lungs. The other man’s eyes travelled across his face, something he could not normally bare to watch from anyone else. 

That was when he realised it wasn’t curiosity or fascination that made him stare at Hannibal sketching. It was the longing for that expression of utter focus and intense interest to turn to him, to study him in such way, to spend hours and hours travelling his skin with his eyes, until Hannibal saw inside him.

In plain terms, Will realised back then, he was jealous of the drawings.

-

The blood was difficult to get off Alana’s hands, staining the white sink with deep red mixing with the water. She scrubbed it off the best she could but the stubborn patches of red clinging to her jacket would not let her win. It didn't help that the only towels in the bathroom were white so she decided to take off her dark blue jacket all together and use that instead. There wasn’t much point wearing, anyway, it was ruined.

Leaning against the sink, Alana looked at herself in the mirror. Her pupils seemed dilated to the point of making her eyes seem completely dark and she willed them to get back to normal. Was it possible Hannibal had drugged her again? 

Her hands were not shaking and after what she had done they should have been, shouldn’t they? Or was it another thing her body would get used to, almost killing another person? It was different with Mason, that was Margot’s doing and she was just helping. She stared at herself, noticing the red lipstick losing its brightness. She wished she took a purse with her but Hannibal made sure she wouldn’t have much choice in leaving her house prepared. He probably took some twisted pleasure in that because of course he must have known the red lipstick was her war paint. 

Taking a deep breath helped to calm her racing mind, counting to ten and back. She needed to stay in the present, she had to fully realise what had happened. It would eat her up inside if she ignored it. 

Protecting their hide-away place from the girl who interrupted them was one thing. Taking pleasure in running a letter opener down the girl’s back was something completely different. And she did enjoy it, didn’t she? It was an addictive, powerful feeling of doing what felt good at the moment rather than what she knew was right. Would Margot resent her after what she’d done? Alana’s mind raced back and forth, trying to connect with what would Margot think somehow but she was coming up blank. Maybe she did not know her wife good enough to see herself through her eyes.

Hannibal informed her they would be making their move to the house they assumed held Will and Margot soon enough and she needed to be ready. She needed to look the part even if she didn’t feel it. Somehow it all seemed equally normal and surreal, trying to save them from whatever danger they found themselves in. She knew nothing about the situation, giving the reins over to Hannibal who seemed to know what he was doing. 

She should call Jack, ask for backup. Wasn’t that the logical thing to do? What could she and Hannibal do, anyway? Bust the place, kill everyone in it and emerge victorious with Margot in her arms? Things never worked that way and she didn’t feel like killing people, no matter what they’d done. World shouldn't work that way, it just wasn’t right. She needed to get the phone from Hannibal, maybe pretend to check up on Victor.

Crumpling the jacket and trying to get rid of the blood in the sink reminded her how she just left her DNA all over the place. It was a break in and police would come, they would sweep the place and she would get arrested for attempted murder. 

Alana put everything into perspective. She had to fix this mess, explain to Jack that Hannibal kidnapped her, forced her to harm the poor girl. Of course they would believe her, it was out of her character and not so much for Hannibal. 

Decisions made, Alana made her way to the bedroom to look for something she could put on and then downstair, confronting Hannibal. 

“I need to make a call,” she announced casually, black turtleneck blending in with her hair. 

“Missing Uncle Jack already?” Hannibal asked, standing in the hallway. 

“My son’s going to wonder by now where his mothers gone.”

Hannibal tugged on his sleeve, making it equal length with his other arm almost in a casual manner. He looked over at the barely breathing body still in the living room. She should call the ambulance, shouldn't she? Alana bit her lip. She would, of course she would, later. When they were gone. The girl would live, she assumed or hoped or feared, probably all three of those.

“He will not. Surely this isn’t the first time he hasn’t seen his parents in a while. Both you and Margot must be preoccupied with business most of the time, he will understand mummy is on yet another business trip.”

Alana clenched her jaw. “The way I raise my son is none of your business, Hannibal.”

He seemed to ponder this for a moment. Maybe she would get her victory, after all. 

“The way _you_ raise your son, Alana? Is that really how you want to formulate that sentence?” His eyes were shining in the dark, drawing her near.

“My phone, Hannibal. We’re gotten off such a good start, let’s not make it difficult now,” she tried, willing her voice not to give away her nerves. 

“Well, in that case…” he reached into his pocket and handled her the phone. 

“Thank you,” she nodded, manners above everything else. Her palms felt on fire as she took the phone from him. 

Alana swiped though her contacts and her breath hitched. Jack’s number was not in there anymore, he must have deleted it. She chanced a quick glance to Hannibal who was staring her down with an amused smile. The pressure in her chest came back, making it hard to breathe. She felt betrayed even when trying to betray another. Not like there was any trust to betray, not on her part anyway. She could never trust Hannibal, and apparently the feeling was mutual. 

“Let’s not make this difficult now,” he echoed her previous words as she texted the safe house where Victor was hidden the instructions to behave according to emergency plan as usual. She added a note to tell Victor they will be home soon, even though she was not sure whether the boy even cared. He will surely miss Margot but why would he miss her? 

Hannibal reached for the phone and she gave it back. There was fire within her and she wanted to bite, if not literally then with her words. She took satisfaction in trying to unnerve the man even when she wasn’t sure it would work.

“This must be how Will feels around you, always the unwilling prisoner,” she wondered out loud even if that was the furtherest thing she thought about Will’s decision to follow Hannibal around like a love-sick puppy.

“It is a prison he knows well. You should know about golden cages, Alana, your own is simply built with literal walls,” he responded, opening the doors for her and indicating for her to go out first. The gesture made Alana feel sick. 

“Now, I believe we have an appointment with Charlie, and it would be rude to leave him waiting.”

-

Alana moved in Hannibal’s shadow, entering the house across from their hide-away place from the back doors. It seemed quiet and empty, no lights on on the ground floor. He moved as if he knew the place, confident strides leading her up the darkened staircase. There was light coming from one of the rooms upstairs and she wondered what would happen next. 

The knife in her hand made her feel safer, muscle memory projecting the feeling of being in control. 

They stopped in the doorway, Hannibal looking as stoic as ever. His tranquility gave Alana goosebumps, feeling like she was walking into a trap. What if her first instinct was right? What if this was all Hannibal’s plan and there would be Will waiting, Margot bound to chair to his right, waiting for the show to begin? 

Hannibal motioned for her to stay put as he entered the room, her view obstructed by the doors. Her sense of hearing felt heightened, and she could make out Hannibal’s footsteps on the carpet inside. Not able to stand not knowing, Alana stepped into the room after a few minutes of silence.

She didn’t know what she expected to find but it definitely was not Hannibal pouring himself a glass of whiskey, back turned to a woman standing in the middle of the room.

“Hello, Alana,” the woman spoke softly, a gun in her hand pointing at Hannibal who turned from his place at the mini-bar. She was dressed in a black pencil skirt and a black blouse, blonde hair cascading down her shoulders. Her calm gaze followed Alana’s entrance to the room. 

“Hannibal…?” Alana asked, her voice trembling. The power she felt when attacking the poor girl earlier was gone and oh, she willed it to come back now. She had a weapon, she could take the woman down. Instead, she just stood, unwelcome fear freezing her on the spot. 

“Oh, of course,” he pretended to chastise himself. “Introductions are in place. This is Miss Bedelia Du Maurier, she is the one who invited us here. Or is that Mrs?”

Bedelia smiled. “Miss is just fine, Hannibal. My marriage was rather short-lived.”

“What the hell is going on, Hannibal?” Alana felt her muscles relax, allowing her prepare for lashing out. She barely remembered the woman from case files, from Mason's coverage on Florence. She was Hannibal's psychiatrist, wasn't she?

He sipped his whiskey slowly. “I would think it is rather obvious. Bedelia led us here to share some of her insights with us, sending us a rather unusual invitation.”

Alana ignored that. “Where is my wife?”

The blonde walked over closer to Alana, her gun still on Hannibal. She seemed to try to put distance between herself and the man, probably a wise move on her part. 

“I suggest we talk this over at dinner. I didn’t go through all this trouble to explain myself with a gun pointed at my guests.”

“I am not your guest, and we have police back up coming to this house any minute so you really don’t want to piss me off,” Alana growled. 

“It is wise to listen to her, Bedelia, I witnessed her almost killing a girl for less offensive actions than yours,” Hannibal chipped in, and Alana had no idea whose side he was taking. 

“I don’t think there is much bite with that bark, Mrs Verger,” Bedelia looked behind Alana for a moment and before she could turn, she felt strong arms gripping her from behind with a cloth over her mouth and nose. The smell was sickening and she tried to take a breathe only to fill her lungs with more chloroform. She was drowning and everything was blurring together, Hannibal’s body curling into Bedelia, into the gun, swirling in front of her. 

Alana did not enjoy being drugged second time in two days and she briefly wondered whether she would ever stop being the prey.

-

[one week earlier]

At first, Hannibal was beyond pleased with how things were turning out. He hadn’t felt so satisfied ever since he started his career as a psychiatrist in Baltimore, enjoying the probing in the minds of his patients, the occasional interesting case he could form into a more divine creature by suggestion and manipulation. That was a highly gratifying part of his life, both mental and culinary needs filled. 

Now, sharing his passions and time with Will Graham, he wondered how he could ever think those time were enough. 

William was fascinating and more and more surprising every day. Hannibal did not expect him to stay around for long after they healed enough from their fall and yet, here he was, travelling with Hannibal through the states and hunting with him even, their most recent price’s lungs in the freezer ready to be transformed into a delicious _pbrkolt_ for dinner. It was one of his favourite recipes, learning the skill of boiling the lungs just right from a Hungarian composer in Budapest. Will would savour it, he was sure of it.

Yet, there were nights that made Hannibal restless, when Will would return from his walks that Hannibal never asked about, when the other man would come into their shared flat and not talk for hours unless Hannibal asked a question. 

Was William feeling caged? Did he grow accustomed to just answering question, treating their time together as mere sessions he felt obliged to attend? Could it be possible Will lost himself in Hannibal’s pleasure of hunting and cooking and discussing books?

The feeling that Will was not completely himself were tugging on Hannibal like an unwelcome intruder, wondering how much of the other man was still himself and how much was him blurring with himself. _You and I have began to blur._

The longer Hannibal spend with Will, the more he grew dissatisfied with their merging. Hannibal was interesting, he knew that about himself of course, however Will was more fascinating and he found himself missing that part. The part where Will would come into his office with a case, with doubting himself and questing his own sanity, where Hannibal could help him out of the maze of his own mind.

William seemed comfortable in his own mind these days and that unnerved Hannibal. Things had to change, he decided. He would grant Will freedom even if Will thought he didn’t want it. 

“Do you fantasise about turning us in?” he asked one night, as soon as Will came into the apartment. The other man closed the doors behind him, leaning against it, his arms crossed. Hannibal read the defensive language as a confirmation of his theories. 

“Every day,” Will agreed. “It used to be a comforting fantasy.”

“And now?”

“Now it’s a ridiculous notion,” Will grinned at him. He made his way to Hannibal, standing by the kitchen counter. He leaned against it, arms stretched on the cold stone. He seemed to always need some sort of support when talking to him. _Curious._

“You could get away with only a few years, if that. Jack would believe you were coerced into helping me, always viewing you as an unstable victim,” Hannibal suggested. 

His hair was falling to his face, almost reaching his eyes. The look those dark cerulean eyes were giving him made Hannibal’s mouth dry. 

“They would separate us.  I don’t particularly like that thought,” Will said. 

That was it, Hannibal knew. That was the proof Will’s presence was just mirroring his own fears rather than William's own desires.

“Does separation from me make you feel anxious?” 

The younger man nodded, laughing at some joke only he understood. “That’s an understatement…I don’t, uhm, I don’t think I can image me without you anymore. It’s…it’s gotten me some time to get used to that.”

“It is natural to bond with your captor after a traumatic experience,” he suggested.

That seemed to anger Will as he fidgeted on the spot, fingers tapping on the counter. “I always thought Stockholm was a place I wanted to visit at some point, why not without leaving the country?” he joked. Hannibal did not find it amusing. 

“Is that how you view yourself now?”

The sparkle in Will’s eyes was replaced by a frown. “I am here because I want to do be here, Hannibal.”

“You are here because I’ve wanted you to be here,” Hannibal corrected him. It was beneficial for Will to understand that. Will snorted, moving from the counter to stand closer to him. He smelled of pine trees and mud and sweat. He found it pleasing. 

“I thought self-doubt was my forte.”

“Self-doubt is your coping mechanism. As your psychiatrist I shouldn't have encouraged that behaviour yet it was appealing to do so,” Hannibal said, his body relaxing in their close proximity instead of tensing as he always did around other people. With Will, his self-control was increasingly hard to maintain. 

He realised Will was staring at his lips as he talked. He forced their eyes to meet to forget that. 

“We’re not in therapy,” Will growled. 

“Are we not?” 

“No,” he said, more confident this time. “We've never been in real therapy, I think. We’ve always been in…” his self-confidence seemed to waver. “In a very intense relationship.”

Hannibal wasn’t the sort of person who would repeat words, yet his mind dwelled on that last word. He felt the need to somehow define it further but he didn’t want to let himself do so, he feared where that would lead. 

The space between them seemed non-existent and it reminded him of the times Will would visit him in his Baltimore prison.

“We’ve stalled…we’re floating in limbo together,” Will said. It was a beautiful image and there was no one else he would rather share the circles of Hell than his beloved William. 

“We need to talk about this, Hannibal.”

He found himself missing the silence filled nights, then. It was more comfortable than this close proximity and Will’s blurred judgment. Hannibal never fooled himself into thinking that their relationship couldn’t progress into the physical, however he did not feel comfortable with his own wanting unleashed upon him in Will’s attempt at mirroring. 

He put distance between them, backing to the kitchen under the pretence of getting the frozen lungs from the freezer. After all, it was time to defrost for dinner. Will stood in place, following Hannibal with his gaze.

“Dinner will be ready in a few hours, you are welcome to stay if you’d like.”

The other man chuckled. “Am I now?”

Hannibal’s shoulders tensed at that. There was an opening to him to get where he wanted. 

“Yes. I would prefer after the dinner for you to leave, however. I don’t need you anymore, William.”

At that, Will crossed their distance and grabbed Hannibal by his arm, twisting him to look at him. He let him, meeting his gaze with detachment. He felt Will’s finger’s against his skin, strong grip not wavering a bit. 

“You never needed me. You wanted me and I stayed.”

“I wanted you to stay. Do not confuse that for wanting you in general. It has been lovely, William, but I don’t find you interesting anymore.”

Will’s hand trembled, moving up his arm to his shoulder. 

“You do. That is why you’re doing this, you’re interested in my reaction.”

He hated how easy Will saw through him. It was impossible to predict his behaviour and that aroused Hannibal more than anything, that beautiful, unpredictable mind of his. He purposefully did not look at Will’s face, not wanting to project anything that could cloud Will’s judgment. It was a thin line and this time around he found himself not wanting to walk it. 

The way Will curled into his body, his face in the crook of his neck, took him by surpise. This wasn’t a hunt, yet he felt like that night after they hunted together for the first time, before Will threw them into the unknown and down the cliff.

His hand found Will’s waist, resting there for support. If this was the last he saw of William, it would suffice him for the rest of his life. He neatly put the sensation away into his mind palace, feeling a new room created for them. It was a glass cage, Caravaggio’s painting of David with the Head of Goliath hanging from one of the walls. 

The feeling of Will’s lips against the skin of his neck left him paralysed. The intent could not be mistaken for a mere press of skin, it was a kiss, and it grew more and more insistent with every breath. He couldn’t help it but close his eyes, inhaling Will’s scent, his hand burning on the fabric on his waist to the point he believed he could burn a hole in it.

Will nuzzled his neck, shaking and curling into his body. The moment was transcendent and Hannibal found himself thinking all the religions in the world could not compare with that knowledge. 

The other man eventually stopped, hiding in Hannibal’s body as if it was the only thing that provided stability. 

That was the problem, wasn’t it? Hannibal anchored Will but that was not enough for this. He let the younger man feel whatever comfort he thought he was experiencing, selfishly basking in the moment. 

The separation of their bodies hit him harder than the merciless sea waves crushing their fall. Will was avoiding his gaze, taking steps back to the refuge of the counter again. He seemed to have trouble catching his breath and Hannibal would gladly give up his own if it pleased the other man.

“I—-I can’t,” Will chocked on the words. “I—I can’t do this.”

“The hunting…the people I enjoy with you…Jack, it’s…I am not doing this because of them…” he was forcing the words out, possibly forgetting to connect them in a coherent manner. 

Hannibal wanted to know what is going on in Will’s head, what beautiful mess he created for himself this time.

Finally, he met his eyes, want and need and power shining their light into Hannibal’s soul. He tucked that away, replacing David’s eyes on the paining in his mind palace. 

“It is you, Hannibal, not them…” Will gasped, hand running through his hair. He seemed torn in his mind, answering questions Hannibal never asked of him. He longed to know what they were.

“I am sorry,” Will whispered, a broken sound.

There was something to say and it was at the tip of Hannibal’s tongue when Will run for the door, slamming it hard behind him, leaving Hannibal by himself in the kitchen.

He could still feel Will’s soft lips on his neck, cold air burning the wet place into his skin, hopefully forever. Hannibal looked at the lungs he took out, willing them to take a breath in his stead. They stayed motionless and he thought he would never be able to breathe again, either.

-

[present]

As he watched Alana spiral into unconsciousness in the man’s arms, Hannibal wet his upper lip with whiskey. It was a Fifteen, or Eighteen, probably Scottish. He took a small sip, letting the taste envelope his taste buds. Ah, _Dalmore_. 

“Before we get to business, Bedelia, how old is this one?” Hannibal raised the glass in the blonde’s direction. If she was surprised by the question, she didn’t show it.

“Eighteen, I believe,” she answered. He nodded, drinking the whiskey in one move. A lesser man would let out a sigh of satisfaction, Hannibal merely closed his eyes for a moment. 

When he opened them, his gaze rested upon Alana’s unconscious body, a short man with broad shoulders dragging her out of the room by her arms. He was almost offended the woman did not figure it all out before they got to Bedelia, he always thought Alana was a smart one. Full of herself, egoistic and blinded by misplaced sense of moral justice, yes, but smart. The fact that she did not entertain the idea that it wasn’t just a mere kidnapping, another episodic criminal in their life, but rather an on-going web of manipulation was astonishing. Especially when they found out the man’s name was Charlie, oh, he was certain she would get it then. 

“It would seem I underestimated my unlikely accomplice,” Hannibal remarked, still looking in the direction Alana was dragged. 

“Accomplice is not the word she would use, I presume,” Bedelia said slowly, choosing every word carefully. The way she spoke, treating every word with caution and respect, pronouncing every syllable was like music to Hannibal’s ears. He didn’t think she knew her speech pattern was one of the few reasons she was still alive, what a shame it would be to rob the world of such beautiful melody.  

Bedelia was still pointing a gun at him, fully aware of the danger she put herself into. 

“Is William alive?” 

“Yes,” she answered. He didn’t realise how much relief would the simple provide. “Charlie will escort you to him, if you like.”

The short man entered the room again, standing by the doors. He wasn’t especially good looking and next to Bedelia he looked like a guard dog. She probably thought as much, too, as she nodded to Charlie and he stepped closer to Hannibal. The man seemed nervous, fidgeting slightly as he stood in his proximity. 

He would continue playing along. In truth, Hannibal himself was curious about Bedelia’s design, her plan for them. The past year with Will was thrilling, yes, but he missed the danger of their Baltimore past and the situation excited him. Being safe and sound with William was soothing. Being held hostage with Will, however, was much more to his liking. What would his dear William do now? 

“A simple precaution, I hope you understand,” Bedelia explained as Charlie took out a pair of handcuffs. Hannibal turned around, allowing him to put the restrains to his wrist. 

“Unnecessary, Bedelia. It is quite clear I am here willingly,” he looked into her eyes, the ever present fear reflecting back at him. He remembered how that fear never left her, no matter how safe he made her think she was. She was as beautiful as she was intelligent, and as foolish as she was professional. She amused him, even now. Would William be jealous? 

“You, Hannibal, are here because you cannot imagine not being here. I will not mistake that for willingness.” 

He smiled at her, a shark smile, as he was escorted out of the room and down the corridor. The sound of heels clicking on the ground behind him accompanied them down the stairs into the basement and further down still, leading them through a dark corridor towards a heavy steel doors.

When the doors opened, Hannibal’s throat tightened. He did not notice anything else in the room but William, his beautiful William, staring at him wide-eyed from his place by the table with so much unfiltered emotion it almost made him fall over. 

“Welcome to the last supper,” Bedelia spoke as the doors closed behind them soundly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you know Dalmore whiskey you understand why I chose that one, heh. Also, Hannibal and his painting, oh god, could he be any more posh than that.
> 
> Next: Bedelia plays God, Alana finally loses it and the Murder Husbands enjoy being tortured more than is healthy for everyone's sake. 
> 
> There shall be smut soon, my darlings! Thanks for the wait, I was busy researching possible fan fiction that would take place in Vegas. That's dedication, right?


End file.
